


Feathered Soil

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe, Cats, Cover Art, Digital Art, F/F, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Interrogation, Language of Flowers, Poison Ivy being a mom, Raven is a child, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Supervillains, Treehouses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-05-20 21:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14902568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: Poison Ivy discovers a runaway in her garden; luckily for the young Raven, she isn't altogether human, and the supervillain tentatively takes the young girl under leaf.





	1. Chapter 1

                                                                                    Feathered Soil:

                                      

    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( The art shown is my own, from @morbidoptimism/tumblr; Bud and Lou's depictions were inspired by striped hyenas for their excessive manes and the outfits were inspired from personal preference of past iterations. )


	2. Chapter 2

A strange murmur through the green undulated through her plants that had nothing to do with the welcoming ripple of excitement that Ivy's entrance usually induced in the flourishing ecosystem thriving within her domain, sparking both a faint curiosity and defensive anticipation, for what she might encounter among her plants.

Cautiously, Ivy sought out the reason for her garden's excitement; her plants hadn't sounded any alarms but were also not giving off any familiar scents or tells pertaining to any of the scant few visitors Ivy ordinarily entertained on selected occasion.

As she neared the back of her hideout nearly completely overrun by all manners of expansive, exotic, and towering plants, Ivy stopped in her tracks, surprised.

A small child was standing amongst her plants, all of which were curiously investigating her with nudging creepers and flowering blossoms.

Camouflaged among her greenery as she was, Ivy made no movements to disturb the child; machinations of how best to make swift fertilizer of the girl, or else remove her from her sanctuary entierly preoccupying her mind as she watched. It wasn't entirely unusual for drifters and aimless youth to stumble their way onto her fertile grounds, but her plants usually saw to their swift removal at the first signs of any disturbance. This was a most unusual occurrence. 

When the girl's hand reached out to gingerly touch one of the buds blooming to life in inquisitive offering to her, Ivy reacted instantly; she'd watched countless humans tear off too many petals and tiny branches to risk any such sacrilege under her own roof. The plants instantly obeyed; creepers bursting forth to ensnare the child and hoist her up off the mossy, fern covered ground for Ivy to take a better look as she stepped forth from the greenery.

The child morphed, almost into something like a shadow, before reforming herself on the outstretched vines, no longer in their grasp, startling Ivy.

The girl looked over her now fumbling vines which were conflictingly twisting about midair to her for a moment, as if connecting her dominion over them, and Ivy looked over the small girl in turn, noting her caped frame and overly youthful stature. 

Ivy sincerely hoped the girl wasn't a new caped progeny of any of the cowled rogues of the city; the girl seemed far too young, even by the city's cruel standards.   
  
The child murmured something, in a language that felt old to Ivy's ears, all but a single word unidentifiable; 'Ninsar', Ivy recalled, was one of the many names given to the culture crossing concept of 'Mother Earth', and as the self-proclaimed goddess of the Green on Earth, Ivy smiled at the child for the apparent recognition. 

"I am she," Ivy replied loosely, her anger dimming slightly; Ivy commended her plants through her intrinsic connection to them, and allowed them to settle themselves.

A glint of light played off of the small clasp on the girl's white cloak, catching Ivy's attention; it looked to be a bird insignia, though Ivy didn't recall seeing its like anywhere among the city or its inhabitants before.

"Do you know where you are, little bird?" Ivy asked softly, stepping closer.

The girl looked up at her, her tiny mouth the only thing visible from under her hood.  
  
"Do you speak English, at all?" Ivy asked, when the girl didn't respond.

The girl lifted a hand, and placed it on the vine she was perched on; almost instantly, a strange shiver glided along the connection Ivy shared to the plant, as if the girl was talking through the Green itself. 

Images, of a glittering city, of fluttering wings and blood-red skies flashed through her mind's eye before a calming, curious sensation trailed upwards to her body, hesitantly tickling near the edges of her mind. Ordinarily, Ivy would have batted the child away, unenthused by years of Gotham's inhabitants probing her troubled psyche to let anything near her thoughts where she didn't have to, but the girl's faint connection to the Green was enough for Ivy's investigative nature to get the best of her.

The brush along her mind seeped deeper, spreading the calming aura through her mind as it went, relaxing her body as it did so; the entity drifted over flashes of memory, wafting over countless recollections of her plants, to her notions of the city, to long conversations from which the feeling seemed inclined to simmer against.

Slowly, the feeling bubbled something into her along the connection to the Green; a shy, hesitant 'thank you', echoed in her mind before the feeling pulled away from her mind entirely, and traveled back to the girl through the vine's natural connection to the Green.

"What is here?" the girl murmured gently, so young and small that Ivy nearly felt something like pity in the remnants of her human heart.

"Gotham," Ivy answered grimly; "Outside these walls, it is a Hell on Earth."

"Earth," the girl repeated faintly, as if testing the word on her tongue.

A flowering vine nudged along Ivy's arm, curling along her side to invite her to lean her weight upon it as she thought the situation over; something inside Ivy was beginning to wonder whether she wanted to be rid of the girl after all.

Sixteen children, she lamented, had been lost to her already. She wasn't sure she could stand the thought of indulging in another.

"What's your name, child," Ivy prompted, lifting her feet to be cradled by her vines entirely.

The girl stayed silent a moment, likely working on a translated equivalent to offer, before murmuring again.

"Raven." 

"How old are you," Ivy asked, her curiosity openly apparent. 

"Seven?" the child replied dubiously, as if she wasn't quite sure of the number. 

"Who do you belong to?" Ivy asked firmly; curiosity and warmth withheld from her voice, as her hand absently stroked a bud to bloom beneath her fingertips. She fingered the blossom's petals lightly. 

The girl grew quiet again, looking down. She slid off the vine, but remained in the air, surprising Ivy yet again.

"No one," the girl replied sadly, "...Not anymore."

"What are you running from?" she asked more softly, the reflexive mellowness of her voice intended to keep the girl pliant.

The young girl was hesitant to answer, but didn't shift around in place, or drift within her floating position; Ivy wondered if the girl had any human habits at all. 

"I expect an answer, little bird," Ivy prompted tenderly, as she pulled a reaching branch into her lap, and pulled the yearning fruit from with the saplings form.

"...A bad man," the girl eventually replied, before a firmness took to her voice; "I don't want to talk about him."

Ivy tried to ignore the flutter of the Green trickling within her veins as her plants continued to bump and quiver around the little girl.

Ivy allowed her eyes to close, and thought things over. 

As she debated with her internal natures, she felt a disturbance along the foliage around her and opened her eyes to see the girl floating within arm's reach, her face still obscured.

"What do I call you," the girl murmured, not quite solid enough to be either question or statement.

"...Ivy. My name is Poison Ivy, to this ungrateful city," she answered, resentment freely dripping from her voice.

The little girl mumbled something to herself, in the language that Ivy couldn't understand before the girl tilted her head and regarded her again for a long silent moment, only the faint sounds of the plants steadily growing, filling the garden around them.

The little girl looked around; Ivy couldn't deny the scarce trace of pride that filled her chlorophyll pumping veins at the rare opportunity of someone witnessing the sheer marvel of her work. She smiled.

"...May I," the girl began softly, as she apparently noted the overly large Amorphophallus Titanum to her right; the girl didn't seem repulsed by the flower's pungent smell, surprising Ivy yet again, before the girl's attention seemed to drift back to her.

"... May I stay here?" the girl asked faintly.

Nearly every memory lingering along Ivy's consciousness screamed at her to refuse; indeed, Ivy opened her mouth to reflexively crush girl's apparent lack of fear for her, before every fiber of Ivy's body and stinging emotions bade her to reconsider.

The words of refusal, died on Ivy's tongue.

"You may stay," Ivy proclaimed, "-For the night, as long as you behave," she added quickly, her tone strict; "If you harm anything in my garden, I will not hesitate to till your body into the soil of my flowerbeds."

The girl didn't nod or respond at all, which Ivy found slightly curious.

"What's that?" the girl asked, pointing to the lumbering flower beside them.

"We're going to have a long night between us, if you ask me about every flower in my home," Ivy warned.

"I want to learn," the girl replied, as she flew next to the flowers great petals; "I wasn't allowed outside, I've never seen a.... 'flower', before."

A boiling, thorny rage flared up beneath Ivy's skin, memories of her own imprisonments and forced separations from the Green.

"That, is a carrion flower," Ivy stated, the vines underneath her molding themselves so she drifted to feet, "She is a rare 'corpse flower', as commonly called", Ivy furthored, looking over the specimen and its fifteen foot inflorescence fondly; "To attract pollinators -or, little bugs and things that help it create its successors," Ivy quickly interjected, assuming the girl's likely lack of knowledge on the natural world, "She emits a smell that resembles rotting meat, which most humans find repelling and displeasent."

The girl's tiny hand reached out to touch one of the giant petals; Ivy watched in something like absent pride as the child stroked the plant gently.

"I think it smells really good," the little girl replied, surprising Ivy greatly.

"Do you," Ivy replied, for lack of anything else to say as she wondered yet again, about the child's genetic makeup.

"It makes me hungry," the girl replied absently; Ivy felt the confusion leave her shoulders as the statement felt confirming enough, that the girl was likely less human than not.

"Are you hungry," Ivy asked, remembering dimly that humans often needed external sources of supplements to survive.

"Yes," the girl replied, after a moment.

Ivy reached up, and pulled a fruit from out of within a hanging vine, and held it out to the girl.

"Eat," Ivy prompted.

The girl looked at it, and then at her, and hesitantly reached out to take it.

The little girl bit into it, and Ivy noted the tiny, numerously sharp pointed teeth the girl had, as they bit into the hybrid fruit.

As the girl crushed the meat of the fruit in her mouth, trickles of juice running down the girl's pale lips, Ivy watched the child bodily shiver before lowering the fruit.

"It's strange," the girl commented; "It tastes... different than rice. It... feels more like something."

"Sweet?" Ivy offered, "A bit tart perhaps," she continued with an absent wave of her hand.

"Better than bread," the girl answered, as her hooded head fell to look at the fruit again; "Lighter, like it might not sink in my stomach and fall up after."

Ivy made an absent exhale of a reply; not feeling up to deciphering what the child might mean. 

"I have many things, in my garden," she stated, waving her hand again as she fell back into the supportive embrace of her plants; "there's much to choose from, if that doesn't sustain you," she informed the girl, gesturing to the fruit.

The girl seemed content at that, for lack of a better word to label the lack of visible reaction that Ivy could discern.

"Will you tell me more flowers?" 

Ivy hummed, as her connection to the Green shimmered inside her, and out through the greenhouse.

"It is late, little bird. I have work to do, and you should sleep; something tells me that you've flown a long way from home, to land here," she mused.

The girl didn't protest, and simply continued to remain floating in place.

Ivy thought over where to put the girl, and swiftly, a pinging spike of responding vegetation answered her silent question through her innate connection to all floral things.

Ivy beckoned the girl to follow, with a wiggle of her fingers and what she knew from practiced experience, was a calming smile.

As the vines beneath her lifted Ivy up, the girl rose alongside her effortlessly, without the aid of any plants.

The vine stopped next to a great tangle of hanging vines, thick with tiny leaves. From inside them, Ivy pulled a great blossom, big enough to hold the tiny girl's light frame, and waited for the child to crawl inside it.

The girl did, gently. 

"You will be safe here, little bird," Ivy murmured at the child, something dimly human prompting her to offer such false securities; "In my garden, nothing can harm you." 

Fruit placed gingerly at hand's reach, the girl coiled herself under her large cloak, the white shimmering fabric bouncing the dappled moonlight onto the foliage around her faintly.

"You will be warm enough," Ivy stated, reasoning from the greenhouse's consistently kept plant-growth inducing temperature.

At a flicker of her fingertips, the flower cushioning the girl raised up its soft petals, and curled upwards slightly, shielding the girl from spilling off to the densely overgrown jungle below.

"Rest well," she bayed, promising the girl a final, gentle command.

The girl quietly mumbled something untranslatable again, before Ivy picked out a faint murmur of her name.

Ivy studied the child, as if she were one of the great many species of plants housed in her walls.

She hummed dimly to herself, before beckoning her plants to ferry her elsewhere in her overgrown halls. 


	3. Chapter 3

Ivy sensed, more than heard the child standing behind her, through the light pulses of the mossbed emanating from beneath the child's feet.

Ivy took a breath and looked up from her papers at the girl.

"I thought I told you to sleep," Ivy huffed.

"It's not night, anymore," the girl announced flatly.

Ivy sent a wave of inquisition through her plants, receiving a confirming answer in turn.

"So it seems," Ivy agreed; "Then it remains at what to do with you."

The girl remained silent, and Ivy thought back to the children she'd once had in her care; a grove of emerging things, reckless with youth, and abundant with energy. Always moving, always laughing, sometimes singing.

The child in front of her however, looked as though she might not have ever so much as smiled, in her short young life.

Ivy was admittedly grateful, for the girl's seemingly innate somber countenance, but felt it might be something to tend to.

Knowing what she did of people, Ivy didn't want to leave the girl to own devices; her mind wandering to the infinite shenanigans Harley was keen to get to, when left unattended for any length of time.

"Do you read?" Ivy asked genuinely.

"I learned," the girl replied; "But I wasn't allowed books or anything."

"Not allowed?" Ivy repeated.

"The cult said so," the girl insisted flatly.

The words rested poorly in Ivy's stomach.

"Come, if there's one thing I cannnot abide, it's uneducated youth," she proclaimed, raising her tired body from her desk chair.

She led the little girl though her laboratory chamber, to the far wall filled with textbooks and marked indexes, and ushered the child to a seat.

"You may read any of these," Ivy insisted, "But don't damage them. I'll be working about, so I'll attempt to answer any questions you might have, but I'd highly advise you to try to sort them out on your own first, as I don't like to be disturbed when I'm working." 

The girl didn't respond, but leaned over towards the shelf nearest her, and started tracing along the spines with her fingertips.

Ivy waited for the girl to pluck one of the volumes out, before treading back to her desk. 

As Ivy re-immersed herself in her research, equations and calculations spreading out across the multiplying pages in front of her, Ivy quickly lost her sense of time.

It was always a welcomed hassle for Ivy, working out a new genetic hybrid of plant; while fast growth and self-sustaining stability was a must, it was always tricky to curb the potential invasive spreading, that might strangle other, equally precious, plant life in its wake.

As she was trying to work out how thick she wanted the general diameter of the plant's potential bark to be, she felt herself being pulled back into reality as the sound of a small noise broke her out of her studious reverie.

Ivy looked up to see the child.

"Finished already?" Ivy asked incredulously, noting the closed book under the girl's arm.

"It doesn't say what half the words mean," the girl explained; "I'm not giving up, I wanted to ask about something."

Ivy turned in her chair, and waited for the girl to continue.

"All your books seem to read about the... structures, of plants. What they're made of in a tangible way," the child rambled; "You wrote notes in the empty spaces, over other words sometimes, about what they are, in a not tangible way."

Ivy hummed in an encouraging manner, prompting the girl to go on.

"Why did you do that? Don't people know how plants are already?" she asked, pure confusion in her raised inflection; "The differing forms of sentience and sacred life among all living things were some of the first things Azar made everyone study. Do the people who make books not study?"

Ivy's brow raised as she took in the girl's strangely lofty words before recalling the girl had mentioned something of a cult, in one of the girl's prior conversations.

"Most humans here, are not raised as you were. They lack things like empathy for anything that isn't immediately like themselves. There's precious few, that are willing to believe plants are sentient at all, or have any manner of thinking or feeling," Ivy growled, disdain sneering across her lips.

The girl looked to the book, and back to her.

"Ivy?"

Ivy hummed.

"Are humans bad?"

"Monsterous," Ivy replied, her mind's eye littered with multitudes of soured memories, each more horrific than the last.

The girl grew silent.

"You're not like them though," Ivy muttered consolingly, rising from her seat. She knelt in front of the girl, and waited for the child to raise her head.

"You can sense them, can't you?" Ivy asked tenderly; "You can feel the Green."

"I can feel all things," the child replied; "I can... sense their feelings. If they're happy or sad..."

Ivy exhaled in something like wonder at the implications the girl's statement held, her mind already busy with ways in which to nurture such a bond to the natural world.

"I'm not supposed to feel happy. Or anything at all," the girl revealed somberly, as if it were a natural train of her thoughts.

"Oh?" Ivy asked, slightly taken aback at the statement.

This time, the girl did shift slightly in place, and grabbed her arm shyly, but made no verbal reply. 

"Tell me," Ivy liltingly insisted, pushing her naturally enthralling presence further; her demeanor seemed to sway the girl's decision, as Ivy expected it would.

"My powers are driven by emotion" the girl stated, as if parroting someone or something long past drilled into her; "The more emotion I feel, the more power I unleash. And that's bad."

"What are your powers, little one?" Ivy urged.

"Astral projection, Soul-Self manipulation, empathy," the girl began, listing things off as if it were a well-worn area to her, "I can eat other's emotions, I can induce rapid healing in others and myself, telekinesis, teleportation, flight," the girl furthered, her tone growing almost bored; "I can make people feel things, I can make illusions, and I can see the future sometimes. Stuff like that."

The girl let her hand fall from her arm; Ivy wondered if it was odd that the girl didn't shrug, after such an apparently underwhelming recital. 

"That's quite an impressive list," Ivy replied, thinking over the powers the girl had, and what uses they might bring, and over what little powers Ivy knew other magical users in the city packed.

"You should be careful, on who you tell such things to, little bird," Ivy instructed the girl, her mind's eye already spinning up scenarios of other rogues and caped crusaders that would readily use the likely impressionable girl for their own gain.

"I know," Raven replied evenly, unfazed.

Ivy checked the connection to her greenery, and straightened herself up.

"It's about noon; we should probably get you fed and settled," Ivy declared.

"The... fruit, tasted good," Raven stated; "But I don't think I should eat it."

Ivy pondered over the statement, and thought back to the child's comment over the corpse flower, and to the general routine her rainy-day clown companion usually had for her slobbering twin beasts.

"Wait here," Ivy instructed, "I'll find you something," she said absently as her mind rushed with routes and plans of where to find and easily procure sources of raw meat.

Wordlessly, she instructed her plants to keep guard, and trotted to her room that stored her civilian clothing; showing up in the city clad in leaves or a skinsuit would only invite disaster, and Ivy didn't feel like tempting fate, without proper cause, which in this case, was not proper in the slightest. 

She slipped into easily passable everydayware, bundled her hair in a loose bun, and grabbed a thick coat to block out the Gotham chill ever-prevalent in the non-summer months in the city proper.

She left her hideout without fanfare, and began her walk at a brisk pace; it was a few miles to the butcher shop Harley usually ventured to, and Ivy wanted to make it before closing, to avoid having to break in and leave a well-mannered I.O.U. for the owner, used to them and such notices as he admittedly already was.

Halfway along her journey, she felt something tracking her progress down the crumpled outskirting streets.

She paused, and spun around; a hand clutching her coat, expecting a rogue or a caped crusader.

Instead, she saw a flicker of shadow ever so slightly ajar from its proper place on the derelict walls some odd feet in front of her.

"Raven, is that you?" she asked genuinely, her shoulders sagging; she supposed she should have expected the child to follow. It seemed an innately human thing, to disobey orders of staying put.

The shadow flew out from the wall, revealing a stylized form of the bird.  The shadow began consolidating itself in midair, as it came to a pause before her.

"Come on then," Ivy allowed, "But be discreet, please," she insisted.

The bird-shadow seemed to get the message, and the shadow compressed and shrunk again, and alighted on her shoulder; a proper form of the avian's strain.

Her shoulder felt strange, where the shadow-bird child sat; it tingled almost, in a numbed sensation, almost as if the area had fallen asleep, or else was disconnected from her body.

She made a mental note of it, before casting the thought adrift. 

"When we get into the city, little bird, it might be prudent to look human," she warned, as they drew closer to the edge of Gotham; "Do you have any inconspicuous dress?"

The bird on her shoulder didn't answer, but Ivy held the impression the child was thinking it over anyway.

Without warning, the bird flew off of her shoulder, pausing Ivy in her tracks to keep from being smacked by fluttering wings.

The bird landed as the child before her, still covered by her cloak.

The girl stood still.

Ivy sighed, and started to shrug off her coat.

"Stand there," she said, as she slid her arms free and approached the girl; "You might feel itchy, but don't take it off, okay?"

She slid the girl's cloak off, pausing to take in the girl's revealed face. 

It was almost human, the child's face; and it called to mind genera of hyssop and monotropa uniflora, for she was certainly pale as the ghost plant, and her hair was a deeply enriched indigo, though something about the girl's somber demeanor screamed to Ivy of delicate petals with light lilac hues. The girl's eyes, of which she had several pairs adorning her brow, were as vibrant as poppies, and through the child's moonflower skin, her cheeks lightly flushed with a color of bluebells.

Such a pretty, fragile, wicked looking thing, Ivy thought.

The girl blinked at her, with all six eyes at once, and looked at her, likely for some sort of reaction. 

"Yes, that would draw attention to you in the city," Ivy mused; wondering how best to tackle their new circumstances.

The girl raised her hands, and glided her fingers over her face, smoothing over her eyes.

Only two eyes, Ivy noted, remained; and they were a beautiful, achingly orchid. 

She drew the girl's cloak from her about shoulders, and helped the child into the overly large coat, making sure to do up the buttons to her neck, and handed the cloak back to the girl to hold, feigning the appearance of a security blanket.

Ivy looked the child over and felt contented with the look; it would pass easily, in Gotham.

"Alright little Larkspur, let's go," Ivy proposed, standing once more.

The girl followed her obediently; Ivy wondered if the strange domestic feeling was why people often took to walking dogs, thinking back to Harley and her hyena-hounds.

When they made their way into the city, they walked into it, slums first. Ivy stood a little straighter, and made sure to keep her senses keen; "Look sharp Larkspur," she warned, "The city is always hungry." 

"I can feel it," the child replied, walking closer to her; "It feels in pain. Like the whole city is screaming;" her voice slightly quivering.

Ivy thought briefly, that if she were human, it would be the time to take the child's hand in comfort; but being toxic to the touch as she was, she refrained. She placed a hand on the child's coat covered shoulder instead. She hoped it would be enough. 

"...Why does the city look this way?" Raven asked somberly.

"Forsaken?" Ivy offered, leading them onwards.

"Ugly," Raven answered; "Why is it black and on the ground?"

"Where else would it be?" Ivy asked rhetorically.

"Floating... Made of glass," Raven answered, as if those were natural and logical things to say; Ivy wondered if it was foolish childish fancy, or if the cult the little girl had hailed from was otherworldly in origin. 

"Unfortunately, this world only has landbound cities, and most of them are cesspools," Ivy explained.

"What's a cesspool?"

"A puddle of polluted water."

They walked on in silence, Ivy steering them past lumbering figures wasting away in the alleys and hunched-over croons congregating around flaming metal bins.

"If anyone makes a move on you, flee," Ivy ordered flatly, her hand clutching the girl harder; "I'll take care of things."

"Alright," the girl agreed.

They walked on until the collapse-ready structures blended into vaguely looked after buildings, and Ivy let some of the tension release from her shoulders.

"The man in the butchery looks scary, and I don't much care for him either way, but he trades fair, and he shouldn't cause us any trouble," Ivy informed the child, when the shop slid into view.

Ivy led the girl inside, and at the toll of the door's tingling bell, the gruff looking man behind the counter looked up from his chopping, as if he'd been pulled straight out of a cartoon. 

"Special order," Ivy started evenly, as she brought Raven to a halt beside her.

"That you, Red?" he asked, his voice thick and gravely. 

"Who else," she asked rhetorically, disdain thinly hidden from her tone.

The man grunted, slammed his uncannily large knife in the woodblock, and disappeared into the back.  
  
Ivy tried not to tap her foot impatiently; a bad habit she'd picked up from Harley at some point in their past many jaunts.

The little girl wandered up to the counter, and pressed her face close to the glass. 

"Were those... _things_ ," Raven eventually landed on, "living, once?"

"In a manner of speaking," Ivy replied, "Farmstock from industrialized institutions can hardly be labeled as anything resembling 'living'."

"Meaning?" Raven pushed, looking back at her. 

"Meaning that Capitalism breeds apathy for the wellbeing of its perpetrators, and it perpetuates apathy for the animals under its grip," Ivy began, a familiar rant sprouting up from inside her core; "The whole of it all could easily be avoided, but of course human's are too attached to their relegated meat products, to consider the effect of their continued actions against not only the animals themselves, but to the environment as a greater whole-"

"-Special order," the man confirmed, returning from the back room, two large, wrapped bulging bags in each hand, cutting Ivy off at the spiel.

Ivy cleared her throat and adjusted her collar, quickly recollecting her composure; "We'll talk about it later," she promised the girl.

She stepped forward and claimed the meatsacks, and offered the man a curt nod in reply, before gesturing for the girl to get the door.

The bell chimed again, as they walked out and the door swung shut behind them; Ivy exhaled a deep breath at Gotham's chilly air and started up her even pace again.

"Are we walking more?" the little girl asked.

"You don't want to stay here, do you?" Ivy asked in turn.

As Ivy made to take another step, her vision swam in black, and as the world disappeared around her, her insides felt all gnarled, and all sense of direction and time rotted away, leaving only darkness and the tingling numb feeling Ivy dimly recalled from her shoulder.

Just as she was about to find strength in herself to make some sort of push against the darkness around her, the world returned, and it was a lush, vibrant green. 

Ivy looked up from the floor, to see her sanctuary around her, the girl standing a foot away from her, head tilted, meatbags handlessly held aloft at the girl's sides, encased in a dark shadowy blackness.

"D-did you-"

"I bought us home," the girl stated flatly. 

Ivy took a breath and picked herself up from the floor, moving slowly as to avoid upsetting her stomach further; "Convenient," she managed, after a moment of rebalancing herself.

Ivy looked at the girl and the magically floating sacks; the girl was far stronger, than she had expected.

A welcome surprise, she mused.  

"I'll show you the kitchen," Ivy reasoned aloud, baying the girl to follow.

When they arrived, Ivy put the extra bag in the deep freezer, and set about fixing up the one she selected to prepare.

She was unsure of whether the child was to prove fond of cooked or uncooked meat, or to what degree warming the meat might have, so she elected to make a little of both. 

The girl looked small enough that she was likely in need of the extra nutrients anyway, Ivy reflected.

Predators couldn't be raised on rice, Ivy resolved grimly, sectioning off the carcass. 

"You can sit, if you like," Ivy offered absently, noting the girl still standing behind her; "And you can take that off if you want," she added.

She watched the girl peripherally take off the coat and hang it on the back of a chair, her cape still folded over her arm, as she crawled into the chair next to her. 

Ivy returned her attention to the corpse in front of her; though it was usually Harley who was readily happy to portion out the meat, Ivy was thankful she'd done it enough to be familiar with the process. 

The fresh meat ready, Ivy rinsed her hands and took out a plate from the cupboards to place the pieces on before rewrapping the excess and placing it overtop the other bag in the deepfreeze. 

She rinsed her hands again, and plucked out a pan from the rack over the stove, and set about heating up the cuts, searing their outer layers and flipping them to keep their edges from cooking _too_ much. 

When she was sure she'd browned the meat enough to warm it all the way through without cooking it completely, she poured the pieces back onto the plate and left the pan to cool. 

She carried the plate over wordlessly, and placed it in front of the girl before walking back to the drawers to pull out clean utensils.

She placed a fork and a knife on either side of the girl's plate, and had the forethought to pluck out a few napkins from their holster, to place beside the child as well. 

She stood in wait, with hardened resolve to see if the child would prove to have table manners on par with the clown queen of crime that so often left her kitchen in tatters. 

The girl stared at her plate, but didn't move.

Ivy wondered if she had missed something.

"What's wrong," Ivy asked, moving to get a look at the girl's face.

The girl turned to look at her, and then down at her plate as her hands tightened into tiny fists in her lap.

"I'm not allowed to touch sharp things," she murmured. 

Ivy exhaled in understanding; the girl was quite young after all, she supposed. 

Ivy pulled up a chair next to her, picked up the knife and fork, and started to cut the meat into more manageable, bite-sized cubes.

"What do you like to drink?" Ivy asked, as she cut the girl's food. 

"I drank water twice a day, every day," the girl replied firmly, as if she expected contention from it.

"...I think I can find you something a bit more lively than water," Ivy muttered, wondering how on Earth the girl had survived so long, in the dubious care of whatever cult she had come from. 

The meat cubed, Ivy placed the fork back in front of the girl and wait for her to take it up. 

The child was hesitant, and watched her carefully to make sure that grasping the fork was in fact what Ivy wanted.

She offered the girl a smile, when she held it in her hand, and drew back from the table as the girl set about to bringing the meat to her face; Ivy wondered if the nectar of the fruit, would be tolerable to the girl in a liquid intake, and set about making tea.

Feeling in the mood for a drink herself, she elected for a herbal, bitter blend balanced in flavor and strong in potency; it would be good to relax, and she was sure the girl would appreciate it, if the child's explanation of her powers was anything to go by.

She mixed her ingredients liberally, well used to making cups, and filled her waiting kettle with water, and switched on the heat before returning to the table to sit. 

"We'll have to wait for the water to boil, and then for the tea to steep and cool, before drinking," Ivy explained, resting a hand against her cheek.

The girl kept her attention to her plate, a portion of the food already gone.

"How do you like it?"

The girl looked up, a bleeding cube on her fork.

"It's good," she replied, before eating the next piece.

The girl chewed with an odd expression on her face, her eyes wider than they had been, as if she was taken aback by the substance in her mouth, which, to be fair Ivy reasoned, she likely very well was.

"You'll be eating this, more often than not I'd expect," Ivy stated flatly; "If my hunches prove to be correct."

The child looked up at her, eyes still wide.

"Juris said gluttony is wrong."

Ivy fought back a reflexive, offensive statement about what body part 'Juris' could kiss, and breathed steadily.

"Proper nourishment, isn't a sin," she stated in a tone that she felt accurately conveyed her willingness to budge on the notion, which was to say, none at all.

The girl didn't reply and turned back to the food.

"I don't know if I can eat it all," she murmured.

"Would you like me to help you?" Ivy asked, a coyish grin to her lips.

The girl looked up at her again.

Exhaling in a few slight huffs of amusement, Ivy reached over with her free hand, and plucked one of the bites of meat and bit into it, cleaving it in two, before swallowing and then finishing the second half.

The girl's face started to twitch slightly, in something Ivy almost felt certain was the budding beginnings of the girl's ability to smile.

She plucked another morsel from her plate as she waited for the kettle to scream.

She was going to get along with this girl, Ivy thought; the concept strange and devoid emotion as she mulled it over. She wondered what shape, she'd sculpt the girl to be.

The kettle shrieked.

Ivy rose to set it away from the heat, and switch the stove back off; with the aid of a well-placed potholder, she poured the hot water into the cups, enjoying the way the ingredients inside each swelled up and rolled around the tiny water currents, before leaving the kettle on a clear burner. 

"Remember, it's hot," Ivy warned, flashes of Harley scalding her mouth countless times crossing her mind as she ferried the cups to the table.

She placed a glass in front of the girl, before setting the other before herself as she reclaimed her seat.

The girl watched the plant matter settle in her cup; similarly enthralled in their movements, calling another smile to Ivy's lips.

She took another bite from the child's plate. 

The girl slid the plate between them, and took a cube for herself, in her fingers; Ivy noted the girl's elegantly sharp looking fingernails.

Ivy supposed they could paint them, visions of Harley covering her sinks with lacquered splatters of vibrant color as she adorned herself and the many refined patterns that Selina usually coated her claws in; if the little girl ever grew any interest in such normal human things.

She supposed she'd have to find a few such activities, at the very least. Harley and Selina often talked of the importance of enrichment on their animal companions' minds, and Ivy had tended her own living things long enough to assume that a child had several similarities to a sprig. 

Ivy watched the girl raise the still hot tea to her lips; expecting the girl to sputter or grimace.

The girl drank the tea steadily, seemingly unbothered by the temperature, and seemed more focused on the way the drink tasted, Ivy judged by the girl's steady swallows. 

The girl sat her glass down, and opened her mouth over her cup to let the pieces of plant matter fall back into the cup before taking a few huffing breaths.

It was a little gross, Ivy dined, but she felt the child could be forgiven, if this was truly her first experience outside of a near unbelievably bland existence.

"Do you like it?" she asked genuinely.

The girl looked at her, her eyes wider then they had been, and nodded rapidly.

Wordlessly, Ivy pushed her cup in front of the girl.

"This time, sip it slowly," Ivy instructed; "Don't guzzle it."

The child took the cup gingerly, and raised it to her lips slowly, a took a loud, slurping sip.

Ivy nodded once; the child would learn with practice, she figured, how to sip quietly, both dignified and refined.

The natural itch under skin picked up, as her mind wandered back to her tests and calculations; her theories and goals ever ignited on the edges of her thoughts.

She frowned slightly, and tapped her fingers along her cheek before sighing; she took another of the meat cubes to eat, as she resigned herself for a likely delay to her plans.

The child would need to take precedent, for a few nights, at least.

"Did I do something wrong?"

Ivy looked up to see the girl regarding her warily, the cup still clutched tentatively in her tiny hands.

"No, little bird," Ivy replied, pushing warmth into her voice; "I was just thinking about grown-up things, for a moment."

The girl looked at her, and Ivy recalled the girl's ability to sense emotion and made a mental note to be careful in future wordings, recalling Harley's keen intellect, and tendency to react to any shift in mood as though it was a negative reaction to something she'd done as a probable standard to go by. Harley's reflexive tendencies to jump and assume the worst of her actions was something Ivy had never been fully able to weed form the woman, as the blonde was forever scarred by her horrible, personal demon. 

"You're angry." 

"I was thinking of a bad man," Ivy replied. 

She pushed the thought of the clown menace aside, and focused on the girl, letting her connection to the foliage outside of the kitchen soothe her nerves.

"I wouldn't be angry at you, little cabbage," Ivy murmured, gazing at the aura of humility hanging about the girl's tiny frame.

"Even if I did something bad?" Raven asked, at the same time Ivy's mind clouded over with the memory of Harley asking _'But what'a 'bout if I fuck up 'real bad?'_

"I'd be upset in the moment, depending on how bad it was," Ivy offered evenly, "But I would get over it quickly, and I wouldn't hold it against you, dear." 

Ivy placed her arms on the table and leaned forward slightly, and let her smile grow fond.

"You're safe with me Raven, I promise," Ivy lilted gently, in a manner that nearly echoed, what she had once said to Harleen.

The girl's face twitched again, and this time, the corners of the girl's little mouth started to upturn, filling Ivy with a strange, but pleased sense of satisfaction.

The girl continued to sip her tea, occasionally taking a successful, silent sip as Ivy let the moment and her thoughts drift between them.

She thought back, to her lost children; to the memories of them parading about the park.

"Can you tell me about the plants tonight?" the girl asked, almost brightly.

"Of course," Ivy replied, eyes falling shut; her mind already mapping out a favorable path for a tour.

"All their names too?"

"Names too," Ivy assured, tapping her fingertips against her chin.

At the sound of the child taking another well-meaning slurp, Ivy smirked; she had a lot to teach the girl, she thought, and she was almost amused to recognize that she was looking forward to start. 


	4. Chapter 4

Harley tried desperately to bite her tongue as she held her stubbed toe with one hand, and keep control of her babies in the other; racked with eager excitement to be in the greenhouse again and feel _real_ _grass_ between their little paw-feetsies.

When she spun around to detangle herself from her babies leashes, the beam of her flashlight fell across something; focusing on it, Harley let out a started scream.

Instantly, the room was fully black, and Harley experienced what she could only describe as a complete lack of physical sensation. She wondered if she had quite literally, died of fright.

'Wouldn't that be tha' kickah', she mused, as she tumbled through the void.

She felt herself being... knocked, she supposed, back into reality, and winced at the bright light now blurring her vision; some feet from her, she heard the sound of her boys whimpering with what sounded like chuckles of indigestion.

Blinking the blindness away, Harley sat up to see a girl standing at the end of Ivy's kitchen table, clad in an oversized shirt she'd once left on one of Ivy's floors. -The wonder woman sigil looking rather endearing, on the little girl, Harley thought.- 

"Nice ta' meet ya', squirt," Harley offered, lifting herself up enough to sit more comfortably on Ivy's tiled floor.

The girl didn't reply, but thankfully didn't do... _whatever_ , that strange maybe-dead thing, she had done before again.

"I'm Harley, Harley Quinn," she drawled, slapping a hand to her chest; "But you can call me Auntie Quinn," she started to ramble, "I had'a Autnie once't, an' she was a _real_ firecracker," she mused; "Never did call me back on my seventh birthday, though. How was'I supposed ta' know that tennis shoes aint' supposed to go in the dryer, huh? Go figure."

"You linger here, in the plants, in the rooms," the girl stated flatly, raising the little hairs on the back of Harley's neck.

"Yeah, me and Red, we go way back," she explained airly, almost laughing at the happy memories.

"Speakin' of, kid, she anywhere around?"

The girl stood stock still, as if a militant nun was just waiting around a corner with a ruler, to catch the moment she so much as fidgeted.

"I'm gonna take that as a no then, huh," Harley figured.

"That's okay, I'll wait right here," she proclaimed, gesturing widely with her hands to point out just how _not_ in the way, or needing of being tossed back into the void she was.

The girl watched her for a moment, so Harley watched her right back, used to such stares and lingering attentions; she hoped her charismatic personality was enough to detract from her body.

She _really_ hoped that the kid wasn't so quiet from seeing the state she was in; in hindsight, Harley figured, yeah, it was probably regretfully that. She huffed in self-admonishing amusement. 

"These cutie-patootie boys here by the way, are Bud and Lou," Harley offered conversationally; "What's your name?"

The girl shifted slightly; so lightly that Harley barley noticed it.

"...Raven," the girl replied after a long moment; Harley was genuinely surprised that the girl had offered it.

"Ra- _vvvvvvennnnn_ ," Harley drawled, elongating the name greatly; "Good name," she remarked; "Classy, a touch of Edgar and Shakespeare, yet without the classicism or overused refrains," she mused in faux-dramatic toityness. 

"How long ya' been here, kid?" she asked, dropping the impression. 

"...Two weeks," the little girl answered.

Harley's brows shot up; a _child_? In Ivy's _house_? For _Two. Weeks_?!? 

There was _no_ way that she wasn't getting to the bottom of this, she declared to herself; Quinzell Inc, was on the case!

"Neat! Where'd you two meet?"

"...She found me in a flowerbed."

Harley felt her heart sink, deflate, and sputter in what she imagined was a comical fart-resembling sound.

"Oh no, Red," Harley whined to the absent woman, "You's promised ya' weren't gonna do this again!"

Her mind raced along memories of plantpeople imploding and splattering green goop everywhere and found herself both overly worried and overly eager to see the girl-child explode.

"Alright sweetie," Harley exclaimed in a measured rush, holding her hands up calmingly; "Just listen to your Auntie Harley, and everythin's gonna be okay," she placated, already picturing the girl's small frame splattering into infinite bits of goo; "...I hope," she murmured, under her breath.  
  
"I said she found me in a flowerbed, not that she grew me out of one," the girl replied as she crossed her little arms, her tone huffy.

Harley dropped her hands and sat back on her heels.

Her boys, finally back to themselves for the most part, chuffed their muzzles over her lap, and dug their noses under her palms for comfort.

"Well gee, that is a ring'ah," Harley observed.

The feeling of the answer started to fade, as the girl drifted closer, slowly.

Her boys started to whimper, and whined as she drew close; Harley didn't know why her babies were so upset over the little girl that they easily towered over in bulk, but figured they'd have made even less sense of the weird void-y place than she had, and did her best to calm them while keeping tabs on the girl edging closer. 

When she apparently got too close for their comforts, her boys made a break for the other side of the room, where they keened for her to join them; Harley however, remained still, as she watched the child sit on her knees in front of her.

"You're hurt," the girl murmured.

Harley bit back a tastefully biting and witty remark, and smiled gently.

"Happens, sometimes," she replied quietly; trying not to picture those times. 

The girl raised one of her hands, and held it out to a bruise on her cheek; Harley flinched out of habit, but felt her body calm, as a warm, unquantifiable feeling and glow, began to emanate from the girl's fingers.

When the girl finished running her fingertips over her cheek, Harley felt as though her jaw hadn't been broken in months, let alone days. Maybe in years.

She rubbed her chin in surprise, and took a moment to _really_ look at the girl.

She was cute, for a whatever-she-was, she supposed. 

"Is she... like... looking after you, for somebody?" Harley asked genuinely. 

"I've taken her under my wing, as it were," a familiar voice rang out from the hall, blooming warmly in Harley's ears; the girl darted away from her, back to her post at the head of the kitchen table, and Harley smiled as Ivy walked into the kitchen, still coated in one of her heisting suits. 

Ivy walked over beside the girl, and looked her over a moment before turning her attention to her, surprising Harley; the thought occurred to her, that she hadn't ever seen Ivy take note of someone else before her, and Harley honestly wasn't quite sure what to make of those facts.

"Raven, this is Harley," Ivy redunatly introduced, a hand on the young girl's shoulder; "Harley, this is Raven. She's going to be staying with me awhile." 

The child looked up at Ivy, before looking back at her.

"I felt an intruder, so I grabbed her," the girl explained quietly; "But she felt like the weird feeling in the plants, so I let her go. She said she knew you."

"That she does," Ivy agreed; "You did well. Next time though, it might be best to let the plants take care of it," Ivy replied, a slight humming to her usual lilt.

Harley watched in rapt fascination.

"Count me both astounded and arous-"

"Do _not_ finish that sentence in front of a six-year-old," Ivy warned.

Harley clamped her mouth shut, and grinned from ear to ear.

"You're going to be utterly insufferable about this, aren't you," Ivy growled, noting her barely contained delight.

Harley slapped her hands in front of her face, and emitted a high pitched keen from behind her still grinning teeth.

The girl tugged on the vines radiating leaves around Ivy's hip; "She's bleeding," the girl insisted, pointing for good measure.

Ivy looked from the girl to her, and Harley watched the dawning realization of emotion happen on Ivy's face, that only occurred when a person realizes that they've gotten so used to seeing their friends beat up and bloodied, that they've become completely desensitized to the images, and that to anyone sane, such conditions would be both startling and uncanny.

"I can help," the girl declared firmly, her little hands still clutchings Ivy's vines.

Ivy looked from the girl, over to her.

Harley grinned.

"She already fixed up a bit of my face real good, Red," Harley declared, tossing the child an approving look as she leaned against the wall behind her.

Ivy looked to the girl and gave her a nod.

The girl's face lit in determination, and she walked over to her again, causing her boys to whimper once more before Harley called out a few comforting chortles at them.

This time, when the girl raised her hands, Harley made sure not to flinch; Ivy never liked it, when her reflexes got the better of her, though the green woman would never admit it. It filled the woman up with guilt that wasn't supposed to be hers, and Harley lacked the eloquencey to make the plantwoman understand that it was _because_ she felt safe enough with her to be on autopilot, that her autopiloted nerves flared up. 

The girl's hands were unusually warm, but that felt good against her protesting muscles; bringing her back into the moment.

The girl slowly smoothed over her skin, starting with her face once more, pushing and kneading it slightly from time to time, as if she were sculpting the skin or bone beneath; Harley pictured it fondly, the idea of the girl making her her own Pandora, a living box of a girl, handcrafted from clay and bad ideas. 

She hummed, when the girl moved her attention and blue-glowy hands from her face, down to her neck. The girl seemed a little less sure about bruises pressed there, but kept her firm determination in her furrowed brow just the same; Harley wanted to commend the girl for her dedication, but refrained from breaking the child's concentration.

The raw, soreness of her throat vanished, and Harley felt herself grow giddy.

The girl moved on to the visible contortion still lingering in her arm, from where she hadn't set the bone back quite right.

It was so surreal, the way the girl gently rolled the pieces of her arm back into their real homes, without any pain, or jarring, or much of any real sensation at all.

She halfheartedly wondered if this was some sort of matrix glitch. 

The girl moved to her wrist, fixing the snap it had suffered, as well as the breaks along her fingers and with an almost uncanny ease, she watched the girl pull fresh fingernails from her nailbeds on her seconds previously, three nailless fingertips.

The girl was starting to sweat, but remained silent; wordlessly, Harley offered up her other arm, flashes of Ivy's venomless scoldings thick in her mind when she was focused on fixing her up.

The girl worked over that limb too, tidying everything from the acid burn to the lacerations, and then promptly moved her hands to her chest, and started tackling her broken and many-times fractured ribs.

The child healed those too.

Harley decided that she was in awe, of this girl.

A little voice in her head, made her wonder if the girl was God, and if she really had died in that strange black void.

It wouldn't be such a bad afterlife to spend, Harley thought, if the current proceedings were anything to go by.

Harley giggled, and then stopped when the girl's hands started to dip too low; she quickly took hold of the girl's wrists and gently ushered them away. God-child the girl might be, be there were some wounds Harley thought, as she pressed her knees together, that even godchildren shouldn't see.

The girl looked faintly confused, but altogether just faint.

"Thank you, sugar," Harley crooned genuinely, for the girl's benefit; "I feel loads better already!"

"Actually, you look loads better, too," Ivy replied, walking closer; the child took a step back so Ivy could take a closer look.

Ivy looked her over, and seemed overtly impressed.

The redhead turned to look at the girl.

"She's still not well yet," the girl insisted.

"She's far better now, thanks to you, than she was before, little larkspur," Ivy retorted fondly; "You can look at her again in a few days, if you like, but at the moment I dare say you look like you could use some rest."

"We could _all_ , use some rest," Ivy insisted, rising to her feet.

At a motion from Ivy's hands, Bud and Lou obediently started their trot to their monogrammed beds in Ivy's bedroom, that Harley had not quite nearly taken completely over. 

Harley bit back her truly compelling desire to push for a night filled with slumber party activities, noting the child's nearly drained face.

_Yeah_ , Harley thought, she'd be fine waiting for the girl to be lively enough to play with.

In a show of her eager affection, Harley moved to signal to the girl, that she was ready and willing to scoop her up.

The girl looked up at her, a confused, blank stare on her face.

"She doesn't know human kindness," Ivy stated; "Or touch, likely."

Harley felt the mirth drain from her face, as her head slowly swiveled to regard Ivy's words face to face.

"That's horrible," she exhaled; she couldn't even begin to start to contain the expanding desire to rehabilitate the little girl, and get her used to being hugged, and talked to, and loved. 

Ivy grunted, and turned away; likely to inwardly curse her inability to touch non-inoculated skin.

"O-kay kiddo," Harley declared, turning back around to face the girl.

"I'm going to pick you up, okay? 'Cause you look like you're 'bout ready 'ta drop on your feet, and Ivy can't carry you without making you sick, okay?"

The girl opened her mouth, as if to reply, but Harley already had her hands under the girl's arms, and she lifted the girl up in a swift motion; even without her super enhanced strength, the small child was more than easy to pick up. She wondered if children were supposed to be that light.  

"Now ta' settle you in," Harley furthered, bringing the girl to rest on her hip.

"See? Not bad, huh?" 

She smiled, and waited for the girl to take the proximity in. 

Raven looked around the room, as if startled, before looking at her, as if confused. 

She didn't seem panicked though, which Harley was glad for; she didn't think she'd have been able to stand the outcome where the girl might've rejected and panicked at her touch. 

She pulled the girl flush against her chest, wrapping a steadying arm around the girl's back; "Okie-dokie, dolly-dove, let's get you ta' bed," she crooned. 

The girl relaxed slightly against her, as Harley turned to follow Ivy down the hall; by the time Harley made it to Ivy's room, the girl was practically melted against her, likely hungry for warmth and slumber.

"You're not putting her in our bed," Ivy warned, already halfway undressed from her skinsuit.

"Aww Red, she's so _'wittle_ ," she cooed, "She won't take up much room," she insisted. 

"And I'm sure you'll be de- _lighted_ to find her suffering from anaphylactic shock come tomorrow morning," Ivy muttered as she freed herself and picked up the shirt on the bed.

"I'll keep her on my side, don't worry," Harley insisted, already moving to place the already sleeping girl in the bed.

Ivy sighed a long, _exasperated_ sigh; but she noted the woman put up _far_ less of a fight then whenever Harley suggested letting her hyenas into the bed. She blew her boy's kisses, and their little ears perked up as she did so, before they rolled back over, each of them eager to get back to sleep themselves. It had been a long walk, from Joker's hideout. 

She chuckled softly as she tucked the girl under the covers and tore off the remnants of clothing she was still in, before shrugging on one of the pairs of shorts in Ivy's dresser, and tucking herself around Raven's little frame, and pulled her into a snuggled hug.

"'Night Peanut," Ivy murmured, warm and tickling, in her ear. 

"'Night Pam-a-lamb," Harley cooed, relishing in the feeling of the woman momentarily, resting along her skin.

Harley knew the cuddling wouldn't last all that long; she was something of a starfish, when she got to REM sleep and the redhead would be forced to sleep around her, she giggled, recalling many such mornings; as she closed her eyes, she realized that she felt better than she had in quite a long time.

She wondered how long she could make it last. 


	5. Chapter 5

Harley groggily felt something pulling her away from the badger dressed in a bowler hat and the tea-table littered with poker chips between them; as the orange soda sky desaturated into a cool blue-grey, Harley realized that Ivy was shaking her shoulder, and that the woman was already dressed and mildly annoyed.

"It's past time to get up, Peanut," Ivy insisted. 

"Aww gee Red," Harley whined, feigning a yawn before snuggling back down in the comforter; "Babies need sleep!"

"Raven slept for three days, and is waiting at the table for lunch;" Ivy countered, "What's your excuse?"

"I got up a few times!" Harley whined.

"Me carrying you into the bathroom to dump your butt into the shower doesn't count," Ivy retorted, crossing her arms.

Harley huffed, but elected to sit up; the thought of getting to play with the kid _and_  eat food was more tempting than the quiet whisper of the pillows.

"How bad was she?" Harley asked, as she started her morning-in-bed-stretch-routine; three days seemed too-long for a child to be down for the count. She threw an arm across her chest to test her shoulders.

"Almost as bad as you came in," Ivy replied gently, likely recalling; Harley pretended that she didn't want to wince at the still recent memory.

"I think she drew the pain into herself," Ivy continued, thinking aloud, "I'm not sure how, but, it would account for all the bruising she had yesterday..."

"Is she cool now?" Harley asked, stretching her other shoulder joint.

"She's probably still a little tired, I would think," Ivy considered, her hand on her chin, "But she's moving well enough and the bruises are gone. It's hard to tell if there's been any lasting effect, with how quiet she is."

"Have ya' teached her how _not_  ta' be quiet?" Harley asked cheerily; picturing a few different ways she and the kid might be able to stir up some fun.

"No," Ivy replied flatly, giving her a 'look'.

"S'prolly important, for kids' developments," Harley pressed.

Ivy sighed and rubbed her temples.

"...Promise me you'll start small, at least," the woman pleaded, bringing a wide smile to Harley's lips.

"Sure thing Pammy," Harley agreed, feeling her eyes glint in anticipation.

"I mean it, Daffodil," Ivy insisted, her tone strengthening slightly, "She doesn't seem to have met most things yet, and I don't want you to shock her system too much all at once."

"I got it, I got it," Harley dismissed, waving her hand as she took to her feet; " _'Steady roots make for good shoots'_ ," Harley iterated, supplying the phrase the plantwoman was keen to rub over her face from time to time.

As she shrugged on a tank top, she offered the woman a smile.

"I got this," Harley insisted.

"Good," Ivy relented; "Now if you'd be so kind as to take care of the... _presents_ , your furry friends left in my garden..."

"After lunch!" Harley screeched, jolting to the door to leave Ivy smoldering behind her.

She bounced down the hall, patting familiar load bearing vines and evocative fungi, and tumbled into the kitchen in a rolling cartwheel; simply enjoying the feeling of freedom flowing through her veins. She felt good, and it felt good to really feel that, she mused.

When she came to a stop, she handspringed to her feet, having carefully avoided knocking into the ceiling, and placed her hands on her hips, drinking the sights in.

The little girl was sitting at the table, wearing a white shimmery shirt that reminded Harley of supersuit styled leotards; she wondered briefly if some caped crusader had lost her at some point.

She cracked a smile at the girl and walked over to the hanging counters; intent on pulling out some cereal that was thankfully more sugary than any breakfast food had any right to be.

"Hey'a, pip-squeak," Harley greeted cheerily, as she pulled out the box; she started pulling out random drawers, intent on finding a spoon.

"The third one," the little girl stated.

Harley paused, and then tried the third drawer; it was filled with utensils, and while not exactly of the silverware variety, Harley was _more_  than willing to pull out a ladle for breakfast use.

She tossed the girl a wider grin over her shoulder, and then walked over to the fridge, where she knew Ivy kept all manners of plant-based milks. She opted for what she assumed to be a coconut based bottle, and poured it liberally into the box, trusting the plastic pouch inside it not to leak.

She enjoyed the dead-eyed look on the child's face, as she let the door to the fridge close with a well-placed kick.  
  
She took a seat across from the kid, and wiggled her eyebrows as she made a hearty dunk in the box with her ladle.

"Juris would give you _so_  many disciplines," the child murmured airily.

Harley scoffed, grinning with happy teeth, and miming a snap; "Oh, if I had'a dime, for every time some snot-nosed louse tried to tell me what to do and how to feel about it, why, I'd be a regular dime-a-dozen magazine model."

"What's a magazine?"

Harley looked at her and took a swig from her ladle.

"It's like a... flat book. Mostly pictures, instead'a words."

The girl looked at her hands, and then back at her.

"So if you had enough dimes," the girl murmured, "You'd be on Ivy's desk?"

Harley's eyes widened slightly, and she let her ladle dip into her box.

"...Yes," she answered firmly; picturing the scene.

The girl fidgeted in her seat, and the sound of her babies' perky pants prompted Harley to turn to the doorway, where Ivy was determinedly trying to walk _without_  tripping over Bud and Lou, and not succeeding very well at it.

At Ivy's admittedly endearingly annoyed expression, Harley took pity and whistled, catching the puppies' attentions. They sprang immediately to her, leaving Ivy to catch her breath on the doorframe, and Harley kissed them both good morning as they tried to wiggle their ways into her lap, and up to the cereal box.

"No-no," Harley screeched pushing the box out of their reach; "Those are _Mommy's_  crunchies," she pleaded, trying to keep them from using her lap as a ladder to get to the sugary goodness.

The box raised, without any involvement on her part; Harley watched strange black magic hoist it aloft with ease, her hyenas momentarily forgotten, until they went back to trying to lick their way up her nose.

"Down, Down!" she insisted, trying in vain to wipe the foul smelling saliva from her nostrils. She grimaced and her boys chuckled and huffed happily on the floor; Harley had no doubts that they'd soon worm their way under the table, and into her lap, and even further into her heart.

"They're swell, ain't they?" Harley cooed, turning to the others.

Ivy took a breath without replying and turned away; which was usually about the nicest way she had of disagreeing with anything she didn't much care for, and the girl simply gawked at her, with a blank stare.

"What are they?"

"The boys?" Harley asked, as she started to eye the cereal box.

"Them's be hyenas, girlie," Harley replied, her tone lowering to heighten the tidbit's flare; "Savage scavengers of the savannah; ruled by their girl-power fueled queens and famous for their laughter," she explained dramatically as she cautiously plucked the box from its black magic prison. She hummed, pleased with the turn of events, and set the box back in front of her and went back to work with the ladle.

"Not many animals can laugh, so they're kinda really special," Harley insisted gently, as she focused on getting the maximum amount of proper cereal flake-to milk ratio on her improvised spoon.

Ivy walked over, a plate in hand; Harley watched her set it in front of the girl, and was surprised to see the dish sporting horse chunks instead of pancakes, or something else kid-friendly, like chicken-nuggies shaped like dinosaurs, or peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches cut into perfect triangles with the crusts cut off.

Harley lamented briefly, that she wouldn't be snitching such things off the kid's plate.

"Ivy says I'm sup'osed to be a carnivore," the girl murmured, catching Harley's thoughts.

"They had her on toast and rice," the plantwoman seethed as she set down a cup of what looked like orange juice.

"Kill them," were the first reflexive words out of Harley's mouth, unable to stop themselves.

"They're already dead," the girl murmured, lifting her neck up as Ivy went to tuck a napkin into her collar.

"Good riddance," Ivy muttered, though her face seemed surprised; "Anyway, little bird," Ivy dismissed, standing up as she looked them all over, "I thought we could take a break from touring the plants today."

_Maybe Batman lost her?_ Harley guessed; Ivy's petname returning Harley's train of thought, _He collected bird-kids after all._

"...Harley, wanted to spend some time with you, if you'd like," Ivy offered tentatively, interrupting Harley's thoughts again.

Harley, cheeks filled with cereal, breath held; waited to see if the kid would take the bait.

The girl seemed more interested in her meat cubes, than in answering; but after a prompting throat clearing from Ivy, the girl looked up from her lunch and up at Ivy, before glancing over to her.

"All right," she murmured, before looking back to her food, seemingly quite intent on continuing her meal.

She smiled, breathing easily, as she returned to slurping up the rest of her cereal.

"So," Harley spat between slurps, "Whatcha' want to get up to? Movies? Makeovers? Tag? Hide'n'Seek? Hop-Scotch? Cluedo?"

"I don't know any of those things," Raven replied absently.

"I'll be working in the lab today," Ivy warned, sitting down with a mug of coffee; "So I'd prefer you two to stay out of the gardens if you can. I don't want anyone getting eaten, or poisoned, or trampling anything."

"Board games it is then," Harley sighed; she looked over to the girl and smiled. "At least they'll be extra fun, since you've never seen them before, huh Sugar?" Harley mused.

"You'll have to look for them," Ivy interjected, thinking aloud; "I have no idea where you left them or if any of them still have all their pieces."

Harley slouched slightly at the news, her mind recalling various nights of havoc laid to gameboards and plastic tokens.

_I do gots' my makeup kit here still, tho',_ she thought.

"Does she have any clothes yet?" Harley asked, her mind wandering the possibilities.

"No," Ivy sighed, her posture visibly weary; "I still need to throw her a room together."

"I sleep in the trees," Raven supplemented softly, before licking the blood off her spoon.

Harley tried to keep her eyes from lighting up.

"So... tomorrow we're going shopping?"

Ivy fought back a groan, her exhale relenting.

"If I can get this legwork done today, then yes," the plantwoman agreed; "We can go shopping tomorrow."

Harley squealed in delight; there wasn't much better then getting in some well deserved retail therapy. As her mind's eye recalled flashes of their more ludicrous shopping hauls, Harley couldn't deny that her excursions with Ivy never failed to get her feelin' like she was worth the collective sum of every gold card they conned outta' every gullable lug they doublecrossed.

She doubted they'd get that playboy Wayne fellow to fund another stint, but a girl was free to dream.

A slurping noise that wasn't her own, caught her attention; she refocused on the girl in front of her and felt some of the moment's buzz wear off.

Ivy would likely be focused on the basics for the kid; beds and dressers, toothbrushes and the like.

Harley made a mental note to look up the best, most funnest places, to furnish the child's incoming niche; her mind whirling away on excuses for swings and slides and other outlandish toys.

"What 'cha gonna be workin' on?" she asked Ivy; thinking, as she waited for the little girl to finish up.

"I've been working on some boosters for her," Ivy offered, sipping her mug; "She picked up a cough last week and there's no telling what exactly, in the garden set if off."

"I licked a slime mold and sneezed in an Angel Trumpet and Ivy made me spit out Devil Trumpet blossoms and also Ivy's coat was scratchy, and the Spidermums made my eyes water, and the garden is full of spores so," the girl offered, pausing for a short breath; "Ivy has to give me witch hazel baths 'cause she says I'm not allowed to take my skin off."

"Awww," Harley murmured, reaching over to ruffle the girl's hair before sitting back, "Red's 'prolly right then," she agreed, "She better sit this one out so she can make you feel better soon."

"I like it when she's working when she stops moving and the moss starts to make flowers in her hair," the girl murmured.

"Honestly?" Harley asked rhetorically, "Same. Finish up so we can play already! We're going to have so much fun, you and me," Harley urged; "Why, I'll bet we're gonna be a pair of regula' ol' chums, kid. Your auntie Harley's gonna learn you all the basics! Music, danicn', funny faces, knock-knock jokes-" she listed, ticking her fingers off.

She paused and tugged at her earlobe as she thought.

"Put your plate in the sink before you go," Ivy bade, as the child started to get up.

The girl hummed a bit, and used her shadowy powers to clean the table for her.

"And be carefull Sweetie," Ivy warned, shooting Harley a look; "Harls' likes to play rough sometimes and doesn't always remember to be considerate of others, and sometimes her idea of fun can be..."

"I'm sittin' right here, Red," Harley interjected, fighting an urge to scowl.

Ivy's look intensified, but warmed over when she looked at the girl again; "Anyway, if you feel like something might be a bad idea, then it probably is."

"For fuck's sakes, Red," Harley replied, shooting her hands up in exasperation.

_"Language!"_

_"Kiss my ass,"_ Harley ribbed jovially, popping off the chair; she rounded the table and lifted the girl under an arm. Bud and Lou chuckled from their spots on the tiled floor.

"I tell ya," Harley rambled as she walked out of the kitchen, "It's like she forgets I was a doctor sometimes," she mused.

She couldn't hold it against the plant woman though; before she made it halfway down the hall, she pulled Raven onto her hip, and marched back into the kitchen, over to where Ivy was still nursing her caffeine.

"Forget something?" Ivy asked.

Harley bent slightly, to kiss the plantwoman good-naturedly.

Ivy hummed, pleased with the attenion, but tugged her shorts when she tried to leave again.

Ivy cleared her throat, and motioned to the soggy cereal box that she had left on the table.

Harley's gut instinct was to punch the box, shooting it across the room, where Bed and Lou scrambled wildly over themselves and each other to grab it, spilling milk and cereal mush across the floor.

"Demerits," Raven murmured evenly; "Six entire disciplines."

Ivy snickered; Harley couldn't help but grin at the sound and filed away the notion, that the little girl was capable of making the woman laugh.

"OK, for realsies this time," Harley insisted, squaring her shoulders, "We're ollies-outies."

"...Have fun," Ivy called warmly, as they dipped into the hallway. The hesitant kind of domesticity to the call nearly made Harley pause; it wasn't the first time she or Ivy had made such a gesture or encountered such a feeling, far from it, yet there was something about the weight of it, coupled with the weight of the little girl on her hip that made it feel more... solid perhaps, than it ever previously had been. As she continued to walk down the halls of Ivy's sanctuary, she pondered it vacantly.

"Where are we going?"

"Ever been to the living room?"

The girl thought about it, and shifted slightly to grip around her neck better.

"Are there rooms for dying?"

"Sure," Harley replied, her navigation reflexive; "Funeral parlors were all the rage for a while. Dunno if they're still around nowadays."

"Are there rooms for not being alive or dead? Or both?"

Harley grinned widely; "Sometimes kid, I think I've lived 'bout half my life in rooms like that."

"I lived most of my life in those rooms, too."

The cheeriness within herself deflated slightly; she held the girl a little tighter.

"That seems like a real shame, to do to a little girl as sweet as you, Sugar," Harley crooned.

The girl was silent for a moment, but nearly squirmed out of her grasp when they reached the living room, apparently eager to see it.

Harley walked them over to the couch, and plopped the girl onto the seat cushions. Bud hopped onto the recliner, well aware of to recline it with distributing his weight, and Lou started sniffing around the floor.

"Now sit there," Harley instructed, before glancing about the room; "I'll see what I left lyin 'round last time..."

She searched for a few moments, tossing bits of things she didn't recall littering along the carpet over her shoulder, Lou eagerly chasing after them. He was particularly fond of the things that crinkled, and Harley indulgingly threw those things extra hard, to give him a bit more excitement.

"How did you and Ivy meet?"

Harley's eyes darted over to the girl, who was sitting perfectly still; Harley half wanted to reach out and manually force the girl's legs to kick absently. She settled for reaching over and patting the nearest one a few times.

"Me an' Red, we go way back," Harley mused, remembering the fateful night; "We were both robbing the same museum and she drove us both from the cops in her getaway car! It was pals at first gals," she lilted happily.

"She didn't mind me stickin' round much after that. Then, well, when times got tough, I always seemed ta' come back here, and Pammy was always there, to patch me up and give me a place to stay. She's real thoughtful, for all the huffiness she likes to pretend."

"What's a museum?"

"That's a..." Harley trailed, thinking as she groped under the couch; "a place where people put things that are really old and don't belong to them, to show off to other people what really cool things they aren't allowed to have."

"Azarath had rooms like that," the girl murmured; "But the adults were allowed to use them I think? I wasn't."

Harley's hand brushed along the familiar feel of smooth, hard plastic.

She pulled out the remote and whistled; "This baby's been missing for _three_ years, and the TV it went to is _long_ gone," she enthused, her hands accentuating the point. She reached over Lou and placed it on the sidetable, to show Ivy for a good laugh.

"My turn, kiddo," Harley proclaimed, "What's an Azarath?"

"A dimension. It's a little pocket place, that doesn't exist anymore."

"Huh," Harley took in, her mind not quite sure how to picture such a description.

"So you're like, really far from home then, aren't you?"

The girl turned her gaze away and seemed to withdraw into herself, but lacked any of the physical movement that Harley was accustomed to seeing paired with such emotions.

"It's a good thing you found Ivy and me then," she slipped in, purposefully placing a hand on the girl's knee; "We'll make a good home here, that you can stay in."

After a few moments wherein the girl didn't reply, Harley's face started to sour, and she turned to look at what the girl was seemingly staring at.

_Oh._

Harley had forgotten, that she had placed it there; the poster was a grim reminder, of the strained stages of healing she underwent, every time she returned to Ivy's gardens.

"That's... my Puddin'," Harley offered carefully; she wasn't sure how to broach the subject, of the grisly clown. Especially as she wasn't sure what Ivy had said about him, if anything, and she wasn't certain of what light, if any, she wanted to cast him in herself.

"His face has stab marks. Lots of them."

"He... deserves demerits, lots of times," she eventually offered, pushing a little lightheartedness into her tone as she looked over the holes and the pocket knife still embedded in his neck. 

The conversation felt uncomfortable; she'd wanted to get away for awhile and forget about the Clown Prince, but it seemed that no matter where she went, she inevitably took him with her.

_Ivy always said I should take that fucker down,_  she thought as she stood up.

She walked over and tore the vandalized wanted poster off of the wall.

She'd no doubt regret it, once his voice started whispering in her ears, but for the moment, she puffed up her chest like the action didn't hurt and pretended that everything was okay.

She looked at the little girl on the couch, who was looking at her intently in turn, with big eyes and tiny hands.

It'd be okay, she thought. She'd _make it_  be okay.

"All right Sugar, back to business," she declared; "I'm pretty sure there's _something_  lying 'round here worth playing with."

On a whim, Harley decided to check the floor on the other side of the room and hopped over Lou, figuring she might have left stuff of intermediate importance on one of the shelves or tables during the times Ivy insisted she pickup.

"My father is a bad man," the girl murmured, stilling Harley's hand.

"He kills lots of people, all at once. Kill planets. Eats souls. He hurt my mother a lot so she ran away," the girl rambled quietly; "He said he wanted a family but he doesn't know how to love. I don't like him very much."

Harley closed her eyes, and took a steadying breath; her mind fighting itself to quell the tide of reasons why she should defend herself, or the Joker, or condemn him, or herself, or them both.

"My father said he created me so I should've listened to him. Did the horrible things he said to do," the girl continued.

Harley sat on the balls of her feet, and ran a hand through her hair.

Raven paused, and tilted her head.

"Ivy says I don't ever have to listen to what any man says."

A dark chuckle escaped Harley's lips.

Her hands ran through her hair again, and she let out a few more snickering breaths.

She took in a giant inhalation, letting the tension roll off of her shoulders, and crawled onto the couch beside the little girl. Lou huffed from across the room, and settled himself on the floor with an old water bottle.

"Pam-a-lammy's pretty smart," Harley admitted.

"...I think she likes me more than my mother did," the girl murmured.

"Yeah, Red's a real motherin' type," Harley agreed. She smiled widely as thoughts of the plantwoman scolding her and tending over her beloved plants rifled through her mind.

"She's got a real knack for it," Harley added.

She looked at the girl, more closely this time, and let the child's not-quite-human aura sink in.

"How 'bout I teach you how to play 'Miss Mary Mack?'" she asked rhetorically, slipping into perfect hand-clapping position.

"First," Harley instructed, grinning happily, "You gotta hold out your hands..."

Hours began to tick away, one child-oriented game at a time.

While she didn't seem to quite get the concept of 'fun for fun's sake' yet, Raven proved to be a quick learner, and seemed insistent on mastering both the concepts and executions of the games, as well as the words used and history hidden behind them.

At some point, Lou worked up enough courage to join them on the couch, and Harley was happy for his familiar presence at her back.

Eventually, Harley ran out of hand based games, and procured one of her many makeup boxes for her and the child to play with.

"Juris said that vanity is a sin."

"Lovin' yourself and dressing up is a valid part of human nature, and Juris can go eat a dick," Harley replied, patting the tiny stick of eyeshadow onto the girl's eyelid.

"What's a dick?"

"Type of bird, maybe? Might be a whale," Harley dismissed absently; "If you say that word in front of Pammy, make sure I'm not close enough to get smacked for it."

"Is 'smacked' a discipline?"

"With her expertise, I'm pretty sure it's a mastery," Harley joked, continuing with the pigment.

"Now you pick a color," she urged, nudging the pallet into the girl's hands.

Raven picked up the tiny sponge-headed stick, and looked over the colors, letting the stick over the golds.

Harley shut her eyes patiently, and kept still as the girl started patting the color onto her face.

"So what's this stuff for?" Raven murmured, "Does it do anything?"

"Gives some people allergic reactions," Harley teased, "But makeup can make people feel certain ways about you. Make them want to talk to you, make them too scared to talk to you, make people think that they should listen to whatever you have to say, whether they like you or not."

"Azarath had types of crystals that would light up different colors, if different sorts of things happened;" the girl murmured, spreading the gold sparkles down her cheeks; "Azar said they were important and Lordin said that crystal warnings were for the tactless."

"I like red and black myself," Harley replied conversationally, turning her face to let the girl powder the other cheek; "I gotta' signature sort of look that the city's all accustomed to. Let's them know what they're in for when they see me comin' round."

"What are they 'in' for?"

"Life, probably," Harley tossed.

She picked up a tube of lipstick and swirled it up.

"Pucker up," Harley instructed; "Make your lips like this," she added, pursing her own lips in demonstration.

The girl complied, and Harley set about layering the color along them.

"You got such a pretty face, kiddo," Harley observed fondly, "You're gonna be a genuine heart-breaker when you grow up."

"Azar said I shouldn't break things."

"Some things are meant to be broken," Harley countered, letting her thoughts ramble; "Piñatas, glowsticks... those glass boxes covering safety equipment and alarms most the time..."

"I _know_  those mangy mutts aren't on my couches," Ivy's voice rang out, starting them all.

At the woman's voice, the hyeana's ears perked up and they started to chuff and heckle; Lou slid to the floor, but Bud, the more aloof of the brothers, remained in the sofa seat until Ivy actually entered the room.

"How'd it go?" Harley offered cloyingly, her tone cute as she started to dust the little girl's cheeks with blush.

Ivy exhaled tiredly to herself as she walked over, and looked them over.

"You two look like peas-in-a-pod;" Ivy commented.

She stuck a hand to her hip and ran a hand through her long, vibrantly red hair; "I was hitting a curb for a few nights now;" Ivy admitted, "But I think I have some good headway, if my current data systems hold up."

"Whatcha' got?" Harley asked, putting down the brushes; she watched as Ivy tiredly claimed the recliner her hyena had given up.

"Well, you have the full antidote already in your bloodstream," Ivy began, "So I was exploring the idea that if I were to draw your blood, I could make a new antidote from it. Problem is, I crafted your atidote specifically for your body chemistry, and Raven's not fully human."

"I'm magic," the girl interjected, confirming Ivy's assessment.

"I know Sweetie," Ivy agreed, rubbing her temples.

All at once, Harley felt a sharp, numbing pain in her arm. She screeched, more out the startlement, then the pain, and for the strange tingling sensation running up her spine and standing her hair on edge.  
  
"Raven!" Ivy barked, leaping from the recliner; Bud and Lou started whining, upset with the sudden shift of energies in the room.

Harley looked down at her arm to see the little girl clamp tight to it by her tiny pointy teeth; she'd been bitten by her babies enough to know that there was a difference between types of bites, and Raven's chomp was certainly unsettling, but far from agressive.

Insistent, perhaps, as the girl seemed adamant about not budging.

By the time Ivy made it over to the couch and pried her off, Raven licked over the bite, the strange, soothing glow coating over the previously bleeding pockmarks rolling off of her tongue.

"Raven!" Ivy scolded firmly, turning the girl upright as Harley rubbed over her arm; "We do _not_  bite Harley!"

" _Liar_ ," Harley murmured snarkily, causing Ivy's cheeks to redden as she strived to maintain her composure.

"I'm magic," the girl said again, slowly, as she were explaining something they weren't picking up on.

Ivy's scowl started to fade, and leaned closer to the child.

"Are you capable of shifting your genetics?" she asked faintly.

The girl, as if in reply, blinked, and opened nine red eyes, closed them all, and then opened them, revealing only four. Their red glow was impressive, Harley freely admitted.

"I don't know... how long it'll take?" she murmured, her pitch uneven in places, "I've never tried to change so much, before, after the first time."

"What was how you used to be?" Harley asked genuinely.

The girl started to redden, all over her skin. The air around her seemed to thicken, uncomfortably so, and felt as if it had been compacted in on itself for its weight.

The girl blinked again and it was gone.

"It was like that, only more. Horns and eyes and claws and things. I don't want to bring it back though. I like it when my hair isn't white."

"Huh," Harley offered.

Ivy exhaled, likely detoxing from the overworked exertion she routinely placed herself in, and stood back up.

"Well then, it seems I'm free for the night, or what's left of it," Ivy observed; Harley couldn't contain her grin as the woman looked them over, "Shall I start painting nails?"

Harley yelped in delight, and the girl seemed to perk up.

It was going to be a fun night, Harley felt.


	6. Chapter 6

Selina sighed as she shut the door and took a moment to make sure that the pair of supervillains were actually going to _leave_ the hallway this time, before doing up the locks one by one. When the last lock clicked closed, she placed a hand on her hip and turned around.

The little girl was watching her silently; she was dressed in a white leotard and cape, which made her wonder what superhero her friends had taken her from, and between the girl's large violet eyes and velvety loose-ringletted hair, she rather reminded her of dolls made out of shatterable materials.

She supposed that she'd be wise to consider the girl as easily breakable anyway, as she didn't much care for the thought of returning the girl to her friends in anything less than the condition she'd been left with her in.

It was weird enough that Ivy and Harls _had_ a kid, let alone apparently cared enough about her well being to drop her off for the day while they sorted things out.

Well, she amended, she supposed it'd have made sense from Harley, as the woman had always hankered for a settled lifestyle with that nutjob of a boyfriend, but Ivy's role in the matter had completely caught her off guard as from the way they'd explained it, the girl was more Ivy's new attachment, rather than the other way round.

She'd have to ask her friends what exactly their plan was for the girl, at some point. She doubted the scheme would end well for the child, so she made herself a mental note to keep an eye on the situation and step in when needed. For now though, she was content enough to let the other two-thrids of the city's Sirens have their fun.

The girl didn't fidget any, as she continued to watch her; Selina half wondered how long she'd have been able to just stand there, thinking to herself before the girl did anything, but thought the better of it.

She was going to assume that as... Harley's 'niece', she was a child that would require entertainment, as much and as consistently as possible, to prevent any sort of tantrums or property damage.

Besides, she thought, the girl was sweet looking enough to spark her curiosity, and it'd been a few nights since she'd had anyone but her cats to talk to.

"Alright Honey," she began warmly, "Let's get started, hmm? What do you want to do?"

The girl remained quiet, prompting Selina to assume the young child was overly shy with new people, or else off put by her favorite black and stitched catsuit, or perhaps was unable to pull possibilities out of thin air without help. 

Keeping her tone warm and encouraging, she added, "We can color for 'awhile, if you want. I have some pens and markers here, or we can just sit down, relax a bit, watch some T.V." 

The girl's eyes widened slightly at the mention of coloring; "Alright, come sit at the table and I'll find some paper you can have."

The girl obediently walked into the kitchenette and climbed into a chair; Selina collected pens and pencils she'd left scattered around the kitchen in cups and drawers, along with a few highlighters and felt-tipped markers. She pulled out a small stack of blank paper from her printer in the den, and placed them in front of the girl.

She debated briefly, on whether she wanted to find something to place under the girl's area to serve as a placemat to potentially shield her table from getting marked up, but felt apathetic about it enough that she didn't bother; the prospect of finding a new table or two didn't phase her.

"I'll get us something to drink," she decided instead; turning to the strainer to fish out fresh cups; "What would you like?" she asked as she opened her fridge and scanned the contents, "I got water, juice... you probably shouldn't have soda..."

"Tea please," the girl replied evenly, without looking up from her papers.

Selina smiled despite herself; maybe the girl really was Ivy's, she mused.

She filled the child's cup up and popped it in the microwave to heat while she rummaged through her pantry for the cartons of teabags tucked somewhere inside.

She located the raspberry flavored carton and plucked a bag out as the microwave beeped; closing the pantry she headed back over, collected the hot cup, and dropped the bag in.

"Careful, it's hot," she warned, setting the cup on the table.

For herself, she poured a second cup of coffee, and sat down across from the girl, who was busy scribbling away on a paper with the black felt-tipped marker. Upside down as her perspective on the paper was, it looked almost like the girl was writing letters of some sort, as they seemed too precisely plotted to be coincidental.

"What'cha writing there, sport?" she asked absently.

"Now that Azarath is gone, I thought I should write all the things I know from there, so I won't forget it if I grow up."

"Azarath?" she repeated, the name unfamiliar.

The girl hummed briefly, her hair blocking most of her face; "My father broke it and there isn't any people there anymore."

"That's a same," she offered, sipping her drink; "I'm sure they were lovely people."

The girl didn't reply, so she took a long sip and continued to watch the girl write, the apparently dead, language.

A warm body pawed at her thigh; Selina adjusted her legs and a cat promptly claimed the space in her lap, she pet him absently, as she was beyond used to her pets clambering onto her for attention and warm places to nap.

She wondered vacantly, if she should investigate matters, or if she should simply try to warm up the girl, and enjoy the leisurely day before them.

The prospect of leisure won out; she took a paper herself and started jotting down a grocery list and a few reminders to herself for the week, before absently diverting her attention to doodling swirling little felines along the margins and empty spaces of her sheet.

Eventually, she got tired of sitting, and fetched the girl another stack of paper, as she seemed to run through the first stack rather quickly, scribing things down as she was.

Selina then took a seat in her lounge, a few feet away from the kitchenette, and opted to pick up the book she'd been reading when Harley and Poison Ivy had interrupted her earlier that morning.

The book was lurid, and held her attention enough to keep her turning the pages as one by one, couples of her cats crept out of hiding to join her in the afternoon sun.

One chapter turned into two, and dozens of pages turned into a few hundred, and Selina's concentration was broken only by a few more paper runs, and the occasional need to change positions and stretch her legs slightly; all of which gently annoyed her cats.

She took a longer pause for lunch; placing the book overturned on the armrest to return to the kitchen.

"Ivy said you're something of a reverse vegetarian," she lilted, breaking the girl's concentration; "How do you feel about seafood?"

"Do people not look at what they eat?"

Selina exhaled a brief huff of merriment; "Usually they look at it," she assured; "What I meant was, how do you feel about fish, shellfish; that sort of thing?"

"I've only ever had horse, I think?" the girl murmured, tilting her head.

"...I'll make up some shrimp alfredo," she decided; she'd ask who would feed a kid a horse of all things, but she supposed the fact that this was at least in part _Harley Quinn's_ ward, answered the question enough as it was.

The meal was easy enough to prepare; it was one of many go-to meals for the days she didn't feel up to or had the time to make anything particularly energy or time-consuming.

It had the unfortunate habit of stirring up her cats however; she spent a fair amount of time prying her pets off of her legs and counters by handfuls as she worked.

Eventually, she had two pleasingly plated dishes, and held them patiently as the girl helped clear the table to make room for them, before setting them down.

Selina picked around her plate, twirling noodles on her fork and waiting for them to cool; she had substituted the noodles with chicken, in the girl's plate, and the child seemed happy enough with it, lapping up the sauce as she was.

The atmosphere of the room grew warm and quiet between them, Selina felt; she dared even to call it cozy.

Raven's initiative to put her own plate in the sink when she was finished surprised her, as well as the girl's apparent curiosity about where the water in the sink came from, when the girl watched her wash up the dishes.

The girl was filled with such questions, Selina quickly found; how the lights turned on, what the couches were made of, what her 'cats' were. It was as if the girl was in a 'why?' phase, yet terribly late in her youth about it.

Selina tried not to let it grate on her nerves, for the child was content enough to at least change questions or ask for further clarifications than just pushing her down a spiraling path of repetitious questions that she didn't care to hear the answer of.

A lot of her questions were about the cats in fact. 

Selina wondered what part of the world her "Azarath" had been, that she'd apparently never encountered one before. She didn't beeline towards them and start pulling tails though, so Selina counted herself lucky. 

In fact, the girl made no move to initiate contact with her pets at all; and more surprising, was that while most of her feline friends were skittish about new people at the best of times, her usually stranger-friendly cats were positively apprehensive about the little girl, which she chalked up to a hypothetical ability of her cats to recognize that children were, at least potentially, less predictable than adults.

The cats that were out and about, watched them carefully. The way the felines tracked the girl's slight movements around the apartment was almost uncanny, and it took the better part of an hour for Selina to realize that the way her pets were behaving, bore a resemblance to the way they'd sometimes stare intently at seemingly nothing on a wall or the ceiling; tracking something that to the human eye, was simply impossible to see.

Selina chalked it up to the kid being apparently 'magical'; guessing that she possessed some sort of aura that her cats were making up their minds about.

As the afternoon started fading into early evening, Selina figured it was long since time enough to introduce the girl to a different activity, as she'd promised Harley to help the girl 'learn how to have fun'; she didn't feel much up to card games, and since she was reasonably certain that Harley had long since stolen what few board games she'd ever bought, Selina opted to beckon the girl to the couch and introduce her to the rose-tinted world of heartfelt children's cartoons.

She truthfully didn't have much in the way of children friendly media; but the VHS of the lion movie that Harley had once gifted to her was good enough in her opinion.

The girl was undoubtedly enraptured.

Twice she had to gently reach out and manually lean the girl back against the couch to keep her from toppling to the floor as the girl kept rising to the edge of her seat. Her eyes were wide open and her mouth twitched silent fractions of words as she watched; occasionally the girl would shout at the lions on screen, in an attempt to alter the course of events.

From time to time the girl would turn to look at her, slack-mouthed as if looking for something; naturally, Selina pretended to be just as caught up in the drama as the girl was, nodding solemnly or gasping for the girl's benefit. In truth, the girl was more fun to watch than the movie, if only to see the pure unfiltered emotions overtaking the girl for the apparent first time.

Miraculously, Isis came out of the bedroom, unnoticed by the child as she continued to watch the story play out until the retired circus-cat crept up to the couch and slinked her way from under Selina's hands and into both their laps, her head rested happily on the child's knees.

" _Traitor_ ," Selina muttered lovingly at the cat under her breath.

She almost felt compelled to snapshot the sight; she felt Harley at least would momentarily appreciate the simplicity of it.

Instead, she let the film and the child's actions play out till the end credits, refraining from interference to instead observe the girl's actions the way a documenter might distantly observe their quarry.

The girl's arms tucked absently against the big cat, and she looked up at her with a clear level of amazement still written over her face.

Selina supposed she should have expected the avalanche of questions that then rained out of the child's mouth.

_'What's a brother?' 'Why did the boys have hair and the girl ones didn't?' 'Did lions exist?' 'Could cats really talk?' 'How come lions were so small, and how did the pocket dimension they lived in fit in the magicless box?'_

Selina answered everything to the best of her abilities, trading practical knowledge for humor on slight occasion, and passed from answering anything she felt wasn't deserving of an explanation.

The girl begged off dinner, apparently hungry for more movies, instead of food, and so Selina indulged her with the only other child-friendly movie in her possession, which was also about cats and had also been a gift from Harley one year or another.

The housecat movie made far less sense than the prior movie, which Selina truthfully preferred, but the lightheartedness of it felt more suitable for the girl so Selina was content to sit through it; the girl picked up on the butler's sketchy behaviour right away, and was quicky to loathe the man for his apparent poisoning of the pets.

She seemed to grasp less of the movies societal concepts; her questions interrupted the movie, and several times Selina had to pause to explain a custom or phrase that the character's referenced, as the girl apparently had a very limited worldview as to the way the world worked and to how people navigated within it.

After trying to explain the concept of willing someone their property, what property entailed, and what the basis for a system of modern government and money were, the girl finally fell silent and they finished the movie more or less in peace.

The room grew darker, as the sun set; and as the time continued to pass, the girl began to tire, occasionally nodding off as she watched the movies repetitiously in turn.

Selina had chosen to return to her book, as the girl re-watched the films by request; occasionally glancing to keep track of the child and the cats that settled closer one by one. When the girl looked as if she were to fall asleep any moment, Selina set her book down, shooed Isis off of her, and scooped her up to deposit her in the bedroom.

Her bed was thankfully more than large enough to accommodate the child, Isis, herself, and the plethora of other cats that quickly congregated on its soft surface. She helped the girl out of her shoes and cape, and helped her settle under the comforter.

Isis quietly wormed her way against the child, purring happily as the girl loosely wrapped her arms around the beast.

"Harley always tells me a story," the girl murmured, when Selina made to get up.

She sat back down and thought a moment.

"Once upon a time," she began, her mind wandering over distant memories; "There was a sly, gleaming black Cat, and a great, big black Bat..."

"What's a bat?"

"It's a little like a cat, but they have wings without feathers," she answered, not missing a beat.

Slowly she spun a tale of how she'd met her brooding warmhearted crusader, inflating fact with fiction for a lighthearted, nearly fanciful tale of self-indulgence, that left Selina feeling as quietly happy as the girl seemed to look as she drifted off to sleep.

She watched the girl sleep for a brief moment, feeling a faint fond feeling in her chest, and carefully got up without disturbing the clowder of cats and made her way back to the couch to continue her book; a faint smile gracing her features.

A few hours passed by, in the darkness of the late night city; the usual noises of Gotham were a backdrop of familiarity that kept Selina's nerves soothed. The occasional siren and gunshot, reaching even her apartment's great height, was par to the course in even the nicer sectors of Gotham.

Just when she was starting to lose herself in her book entirely, a few knocks beckoned her to the door, and a sleepy, eye rubbing Raven stumbled out of the bedroom to help greet the pair of supervillainesses at the door.

"Hey Chick-a-dee," Harley cooed, bending down to offer the girl a welcoming smooch.

The girl hugged Harley back before Harley scooped her up, resting the girl along her hip.

"Thank's Kitty," Harley reaffirmed; "You're'a real pal."

"I hope she wasn't too much trouble," Ivy offered, glancing around the apartment, likely to spot any damages or evidence of things having spun out of control.

"She was just darling," Selina offered truthfully; genuinely unperturbed by having spent the day with the girl.

"Glad ta' hear it, Whiskers," Harley shot back cheerfully.

"Did you gals get everything... taken care of?" She asked carefully.

Poison Ivy nodded.

"It was a tight fit," Ivy began.

"-And a close call," Harley interjected happily.

"But I think we got everything. We can take her from here," she stated, squaring her shoulders slightly.

The pair of women looked exhausted, but satisfied; but not quite in the same manner that resulted from their usual heists or... carnal pursuits.

Selina passed it off as something she'd learn about sooner or later, if at all, and simply nodded good-naturedly.

The girl reached out, and Ivy took drew the girl into her arms almost reflexively; Selina smirked at the child who apparently had the courage to nuzzle up to the neck of the second most feared woman in all of Gotham City.

As Ivy made to leave, the girl made whine and the woman stopped; the girl twisted around in the green woman's arms and reached out as if to beckon her.

Selina leaned forward and the girl sleepily wrapped her arms around her, prompting Harley to giggle.

"Night, Auntie'Cat," the girl murmured faintly, before releasing her to worm her way back into her apparently found comfy place against the plantwoman.  

"Take care Kitty," Harley shot, slapping her shoulder merrily, as the pair made their way back out the door.

Selina hummed as she watched them reach the end of the hall, and returned Harley's wave until the elevator doors snapped shut in front of her.

A furry blur almost raced out to join them, but a swift foot caught Isis mid-attempt, and Selina expertly lifted the cat back inside.

She ran a hand through her hair, thinking over the absolute oddness of the day's events, and chuckled to herself.

The other rogues wouldn't believe her if she told them, she mused. 


	7. Chapter 7

  
"Rise and shine, Sunshine!" a highly pitched, dramatically volumed feminine voice echoed, jolting Raven upright and fully alert. Through the ringing in her ears jumbling about her head, Raven's eyes opened to the familiar jubilant woman she'd grown fondly accustomed to.

Harley seemed in higher spirits than she was most mornings; an odd sense of peripheral alertness coming into focus diverged her attention. Raven looked around to notice that the section of foliage she was in, was vastly different then what it used to be.

"Surprise, Kiddo," Harley furthered, as Raven drank it all in; "Welcome to your super cool and fun new playground palace treehouse!" the woman exclaimed gleefully, "It's even got a slide!"

The... room, she was in seemed to have been made as if the other woman presiding over her care, Ivy, sculpted a great tree with a conveniently shaped space inside. There were lights bound by strings casting the space in a warm glow, what looked to be dressers, blankets strung from different heights, glass planes for viewing things, objects resembling weird hyenas, among countless other objects that Raven couldn't place a frame of reference for.

At Harley's overly eager expression, and her mid-summer excitement, Raven allowed herself a smile for the woman's benefit; the Earth woman's fascination with physical pursuits of interest was still altogether baffling to her, but endearingly so.

"We picked out some new duds for you too," the women revealed, pointing at the dressers; "Try 'em on!"

Raven bit back a reflexive statement of worldly possessions and vanity being inherent sins, and walked over to one of the dressers, finding what she could only frame as an abundance of demerit worthy fabrics to wear.

She could dismiss gods of growth having next to little need of cloth to obscure their forms, and be content in assuming Harley was justly demerited for her various states of indecency, and even rationalize the need to occasionally wear inadequate coverings when her garbs were being cleansed, but it felt sinful just looking at the colored fabrics, let alone the debate of putting them on her body.

She wondered, if perhaps different gods dressed their disciples differently; feeling more content at the thought, she decided that Harley was the likeliest example of proper earthly attire, and reached into the drawer.

She pulled out a short brightly colored tunic, with an odd sigil painted on its... front? The tunic Ivy had dressed her bore a sigil on the breast, she mused.

"You gotta put on undies too, kiddo," Harley instructed from the bed; Raven looked at her questioningly and Harley pointed to another drawer.

The drawer opened to reveal... things? Underthings, she supposed, that were meant to go around her legs. They too, appeared in an array of colors and sigils. she chose a pair at random, hoping the magical properties of the garbs would not clash with each other due to her lack of knowledge over them.

The socks at least, she was familiar with; she found those in a separate drawer along with several pairs of footwear lining the floor on a rack. The glossy black ones were noticeably prominent, for their lack of bright color in comparison to its brethren, so Raven selected them out of the rest.

"Almost there Chick-a-dee," Harley sang as she rolled over onto her hands, "Now find something for your bottom half," she instructed vaguely.

Resisting the urge to show the tediousness of the task on her face, Raven turned to the dressers again and started opening more drawers, eventually finding what looked to be ends of tunics that had been sheared off. Harley had worn such ends around her hips, she recalled, so it was by simple deduction that that was where the garment was to be placed.

Her cape, she noted, was hung on a tack, and her belt was right beside it; she quickly grabbed them too, and felt more like herself with them in place. She wanted to keep what little of Azarath as she could; she was the only one left to remember it, after all.   

None of the colors on her fabrics matched, she noted; she hoped that wouldn't be a problem. She did feel more human for them, which she hoped was a good thing; Harley's smile seemed approving, at least.

"Nice job Kiddo, we'll work on your style senses later," Harley commended mysteriously before sliding off the bed.

Raven allowed herself to be practically scooped up and instinct instructed her to clutch the woman tightly as she bounded over to a hole in the floor, and proceeded to grasp a pole and slide down.

When they landed, they were indeed still in Ivy's greenhouse, but judging from the types of plants around them, Raven guessed they were somewhere in the non-proactively hostile tropical subsection of the woman's seemingly vast recesses.

'Treehouse' did indeed seem to fit the odd, colorful structure, for it was in fact made from the forms of trees and other sturdy flora, and she supposed it resembled what she thought a 'house' ought to look like, in that it was a place where people sometimes lived in its interior emptinesses.

The ground around them also sported objects; some colorful and sleek, some tapering into affixation to the larger structure. She noticed a particularly large hyena some feet from them, eerily still and devoid of any sort of emotional spillover.

"Is that puppy dead?"

"That's a giraffe," Harley replied evenly, as if the declaration explained things; "It's a toy."

Raven opened her mouth to inquire further, but the woman hushed her preemptively.

"A toy is only the best, most probably wonderful thing there is," Harley rambled, leading her to the unmoving beast; "Toys are devices that which assists in the stimulation of person's baser instincts in a safe and reasonably happy manner! In short, they're for fun! and fun," Harley continued, giving her a serious look, "Is a vital part of the human experience."

"Azar said that I'm not supposed to have fun, because of my emotions being volatile," Raven interjected hesitantly; she didn't want to anger the memory of her former mentor, and she wasn't sure her new overseers really understood what she was capable of, to keep pushing fate as they allowed.

Still, a quiet, selfish part of her wanted them to continue as they had been, in giving her such earthly delights so admittedly, she was not insisting to the true path as she ought to have been.

"I'm Harley and my PHD says that I'm pretty fuckin' knowledgeable in how brains work kid, and in my serious prognosis," she declared, her posture stuffy, her emotions hot; "You're gonna' get all the fun you can stand, and it's gonna' be good fer' you!"

Harley waggled a finger at her, before a large grin broke over her face; it was still strange to see... expressions, on people, and Raven was certain she hadn't quite grasped their meanings or usages, but the study of language had been one of the few hobbies Azar had deemed acceptable to her, and Raven felt sure that in time, she'd learn.

Harley continued to introduce other objects and passtimes to her; walls for climbing, inclined planes for sitting-based-momentum transportation, simple pulley systems that allowed for object dispersal in a series of manual maneuvers, more 'giraffes', all of which came in their own subcategories like 'teddy-bears' and 'monkeys' and 'frogs'.

By the time the plant goddess summoned them for a midday sup, Raven found herself admittedly glad for the break; it felt like since she had been found in the flowers, a great many flowers were growing in her own head with new petal of lesson learned.

She wondered if that was fitting or not, as she picked away at the bounty on her plate.

It was also difficult not to think about the bounty on her plates, and their origins. Truthfully, she wasn't sure what horse was, but it seemed a larger sort of hyena, and they were very much alive and Raven was as capable of feeling emotions from them as she was of any of the plants and people in the city.

Therefore, she concluded that before they had been designated food, horses must have existed in similar states of being as Harley's hyenas, which was troubling to say the least, in that she wasn't supposed to consume anything living, as that was a direct draw to her... father's side of her body.

Perhaps, she thought, as she ate on, their overall state of inactivity proved them an exception to the rule, as even Harley and Ivy partook in the seared flesh from time to time.

Yes, she thought, clearly the 'food' was inert, and therefore no longer constituting as anything 'alive', and therefore not a sin apon a soul in a structural sense.

She paused her musings from time to time, to listen to her overseers; Ivy seemed tired, presumably from sculpting the great deal of greenery as Raven inferred she had, and Harley too, seemed to carry exhaustion about her shoulders under the veneer of chaotic expressionism; they both seemed deep-rootedly happy though, and for that Raven found herself desiring to add to their moods. To perhaps share in them herself.

She wasn't quite sure what things she ought to say to convey that desire, but recalling the great many lessons in humility and diligent deference she'd had in Azarath, she stretched the muscles around her lips, and sat up straight.

"Thank you, for the 'treehouse'," she murmured carefully, attempting to keep her voice as 'unmarred' as possible.

"I'm going to keep learning 'fun', and will use it often," she added, guessing on its apparent importance from Harley's earlier fixations on the subjects.

The women smiled, and proceeded to pamper her with encouragements and other phrases that apparently signaled a correctly handled exchange on her part.

She let the conversation between the elders pick back up between themselves, and quietly went back to her meal; the conversations drifted, as did Raven's thoughts; she wondered why it seemed to be both the matriarchs she found, drew in such odd devouts.

Azar's small population had been understandable; the congregation had sustained themselves indefinitely within Azar's pocket dimension, and it was only when she pulled her mother, and she supposed herself also, technically speaking, that their oddities began to manifest, presumably.

She wondered if Harley was a deity of chaos; an incarnation of the process of change manifested into the body of a person, or if she and by extension humans, were every bit as wild and exuberantly sinful as Juris had instructed her to believe.

She wondered, again, if it was by chance that she'd found herself under the study of not one but two deities of importance, or if it 'twere fate brought about as the probable result of her father's half of herself.

She let the thoughts drift away, the lesson's of Azar still strongly composing her state of being; never letting any particular thought or feeling linger much longer than it took for its appearance to be recognized and then dismissed.

She soon found herself sitting with her overseer in the great flowers, Harley at her back, fluttering about her hair like a handmaid, Ivy across from her, guiding their trip deep down into the faint and intangible trace of the Growing Place.

She tried to appease the matron by performing such rituals with her; she wasn't sure what sensing the pulse of life of the flowers would accomplish, but she trusted in her elders enough to assume that once she'd practiced it enough, the meanings and lessons would become clear.

Ivy's meditation seemed to take her astray into the plane of the growing place, and Raven was capable of feeling the plane, even if she wasn't quite sure how to enter it herself. Truthfully, she was more than a little apprehensive to enter it; her father no doubt sensed her fall onto Earth, she didn't want to lead him to the interdimensional growing place of all things, lest he vow to destroy that place for all times, too.

She also wasn't entirely sure that the growing place even wanted her inside it; while her mother's part of her felt... fine enough, poking at the plane as her astral self allowed for, her father's side was tainted enough that Raven was almost certain the dimensional bend not only felt it, but was reacting to it whenever she drew near.

When at last her efforts tired her, and her focus grew strained, Ivy drew her into her lap, and offered words of platitudes and praises, with rainy morning feelings of sincerity clouding out from her pores.

Raven wasn't sure she deserved such words, as it seemed a relatively simply task she'd failed at more than once, but the woman was warm in such a way that Raven couldn't explain, and therefore simply opted to not to try.

The woman wove hundreds of tiny, frail blossomed flowers into Raven's hair as she spoke to her, filling her nose with sweet scents and hazy eyes; her father's eyes slipped open, and Raven once again faced the whole of the harvest god sheltering her.

Through the red haze of her father's sight, Ivy was wholly wild; nature itself both plentiful and impersonal to the struggles of individual life, but nursing and supportive to it as a whole. A god of growth, a god of change, a god of renewal.

Such a strange departure, from the god of consistency and virtue that had been her old mentor, Azar.

When Ivy muttered something about 'time', which was still on Raven's list of things to learn about, she was once again left in the care of Ivy's devout, Harley.

Harley, still filled with the pleasantly warm promise of teaching her the ways of 'fun', tasked her to accompany her as she 'walked' her hyenas, the beasts apparently needing excessive tending to keep them healthy.

The prospect of leaving the flowers again made her apprehensive.

She paused, as Harley held the door open for her, the hyenas pulling at their tethers.

"What's wrong?" Harley asked, confusion on her face.

Raven admonished herself for her cowardice, and followed the woman outside.

Harley led them down the hard path, a set of tiny chariots under her feet pulled forward by the impulses of her beasts. The pace was leisurely enough that Raven was able to walk steadily with her, if she kept the rhythm even.

"Ahh," Harley exhaled greatly, "This is great, inn't Kid?"

"The city is loud," Raven offered; she didn't want to leave the flowers. She wasn't looking forward to the feelings of the people all overcrowded into one place building louder and louder into her head.

She didn't want to disobey instruction again however; she'd learnt from the last time, she thought to herself.

They walked a great long while; the sun faded into darkness and the moon occasionally peaked through the dense clouds above them.

Harley, unlike Ivy, had no qualms leading her through the city; the woman led her through one narrow passage after another, and seemed to let the noses of her beasts lead them more often than forging their path herself.

Raven couldn't deny a sort of wonder, that came over her as she drank in the ugliness around her; the people surrounding them withered from hopelessness and conviction rather than years of quiet study, the puddles littered with weird papers, the walls streaked with stains, scurrying of tiny cats with strange naked tails.

There were lots of bats.

Well, she assumed they were the bats that the Catwoman had referenced for they flew and had no feathers, and were drawn to orbiting flickering lights in dizzying circles. They seemed almost too tiny to be considered big or brave or wise, but Raven reasoned that size like most things was perhaps relative.

Her musings were cut short, when the tethers slipped from Harley's grasp, freeing the beasts into the city at full gait. The woman frantically called after them and gave chase, but Harley seemed far more innately familiar with their surrounds than she did, and Raven quickly found herself at a loss for direction.

She was alone once more, in the city.

This time, though she knew there was a safe green place to return to, what should have been a comforting thought only brought her something closer to sensations of quickened pulses and rising hyperawareness. The hyperawarness only brought more feelings leaked into her head, making her body feel weighted and slouched and red hot and ice cold and altogether dizzy and unpleasent.

She wanted to pull her soulself out of her body; she wanted to sit and meditate, to let the feelings that weren't hers drift away as they were replaced.

Her face felt wet.

Touching it, she concluded that her body wanted to cry.

"Hey... are you alright?"

Raven looked up, a bolt of apprehension mirroring the feelings she'd experienced when her mother caught her in the circle, and saw...

A child?

Though she'd never seen any, other than recently in her own reflection, she deduced that they must have been, for their small stature.

The child came up to her, slowly.

He wasn't wearing any tunic endings; but his underthings and tunic tops were very brightly colored and he had a shawl around his shoulders. He also had a thing on his, ringing his eyes. A sort of, stuck hood-shadow, she supposed.

"Are you lost?" the child asked, warmly.

Through no command of her own, her body started to cry.


	8. Chapter 8

  
"Whaoh, whaoh, it's okay," he offered warmly, aproaching the girl, his hands outstretched and placating. The crying girl was younger than him by a few years at least, and her mismatched outfit stood out for its cape and chain.

Some sort of lost ward perhaps? A magician's apprentice maybe, for the overall air of grace about her. She must've come from Metropolis, he thought; Batman hadn't mentioned any girls about the city lately.

He finally reached the girl and stopped short in front of her, not quite if it was a trap or not; a lot of villains liked to cry before throwing punches, but the girl seemed more lost and confused than intentionally deceptive. He supposed she could still be dangerous, but he chose to give her the benefit of the doubt by placing a hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay, everything will be alright," he offered.

The girl rubbed intently at her face; he hoped she wasn't rubbing it raw.

"My name's Robin, what's yours?" he asked hopefully.

The girl's hands slowed, and she shook her head a few times; just as he started to grow worried, the girl turned to him, her hood drawn and head hung low.

"I'm Raven," she murmured in a voice that sounded faint and shattered; his heart started to swell for the girl. It wasn't cool to see kids younger than him so upset on their own in the dead of night. He wondered what happened to her to get her in such a state.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?" he asked softly, tilting slightly to peak at her face; moreso at her expression than her identity, mind. He hoped the action didn't seem insensitive to the girl. 

"The city's too loud," she murmured strangely, a croak in her throat. The girl rubbed at her face again, which made Robin wonder if there was a headache involved in the equation, or if the girl was experiencing a sensory overload.

He reached into his utility belt and popped a pair of noise cancelation earbuds into his palms; "Here," he offered, holding them out to her; "If you put them in your ears, they might help quiet everything down."

The girl hesitantly retracted them from his grasp and looked to put them in place; she was quiet for a moment, before she seemed to shake slightly and emit a lulled exhale.

He knelt slightly, so Raven could see his face as he mouthed the words of his next questions; 'Does that help?' 'Is there somewhere you need to be?'

As he was about to ask the girl if there was someone he could find for her, he felt a strange sensation on the back of his neck; the kind that usually informed him that he should move, as quickly as possible.

He spun around to see strange shadows moving along the walls of the building next to them.

Instantly, his hand went to his grappling hook while his other arm wrapped around the girl; his device shot them up towards a rooftop and the weight of the girl, adding to his own weight, strained against his shoulder.

When they landed on the roof, he spun to take note of the alley; finding it clear.

Hopefully; whatever it was, he thought, wouldn't find them on the rooftops.  
  
After scanning the alley and the buildings for any signs of further strange activity, he turned back to the girl, finding her gazing off over the city on the other side of the roof.

"Careful, you don't want to fall," he warned, before remembering she likely couldn't hear him. He muttered to himself at that before trotting over, pulling an early welcoming grin across his face.

When he made it to the girl, he stopped in his tracks as the girl threw herself back from the edge, a large black shape flying up from the side of the building face. He righted himself as he recognized the blurred figure of Batgirl coming to land in front of them.

"There's trouble downtown," she informed him, her words a little forced from exertion; "Batman's in the middle of something on the other side of town and he needs us to check out the reports of activity around here-"

She stopped, taking note of the girl in front of her. 

"...Is she one of ours?" she asked, likely noting the cape as he had.

"I don't know," he replied, coming up next to them; "I found her in the alley down there, I brought her up here when I noticed something fishy about the shadows."

Barbara hummed, placing a hand to her chin; "This is going to be one of those nights, isn't it," she mused.

She lowered herself to her knees to get a good look at the kid.

"You alright honey?" she asked.

"I gave her my earplugs;" Robin cut in, prompting Batgirl to stand back up; "I think she's got sensitivities, maybe from hyperawareness training or something."

"I don't remember anybody visiting here, not with a kid in tow," Barbara thought aloud, "Do you?"

"Nah," he answered, shaking his head, "She's gotta be from Metropolis though, I mean look at her clothes!"

"More like from outerspace," Batgirl countered, "You ever see Manhunter try to blend in? She's a spittin' image."

"Should we take her with us then, do you think?"

Batgirl loosed another heavy exhale, before turning around to assess the scenery.

"We can't bring a kid on an investigation," she nearly sighed, "You know how Bats gets."

"We could leave her at the station," she suggested; "While we're at the station, we can figure out what's exactly going on around here that has everyone in a tizzy," she continued.

"We could leave her with Alfred," he countered, the picture of the warmhearted gentleman clouding his eye.

"Yeah, but if Bats finds out we brought her home and she isn't one of ours..." she warned.

He sighed, giving into the implications; they promised to be smart about things to be worthy of the team after all. He frowned.

Batgirl knelt down again, and held her arms open, a warm smile on her face; the girl clamored into her arms with little prompting.

At his scowl, Batgirl chuckled.

"Woman's touch," she replied gayly, already grappling away.

He shot after her; each of them repelling and swinging through the city streets with well-versed ease. The liberating feeling of moving through Gotham as they could, he reflected, was easily one of his favorite parts of the job.

On their way to the station however, a soundblast caught them off guard, forcing to change the arcs of their swings to reassess the city; down below, a good chunk of city block was frozen solid.

"That'd be the tizzy, I'll bet," he shouted over the din of frantic civilians; "Let's check it out!"

He swung hard and low, Batgirl right behind him; they landed a few steps from the encased entrance in an adjacent alley. Silently, Batgirl landed next to him, dropping the girl to the ground.

"Stay here," she ordered, motioning to the girl; Barbra looked up at him and nodded once, signaling him that she was ready to venture inside.

The air inside the building was absolutely frigid, it drew his breath out in short puffs and stung his eyes; Batgirl donned an emergency mask. They moved quietly, not quite sure what to expect, other than freeze rays, guns, and an army of brutish henchmen.

It wasn't long before they found all three; their element of surprise never seemed to last long after the first Batarang was thrown, Robin mused, knocking heads together.

Dodging the physical blows was relatively easy, though taxing; dodging the bullets was far more strenuous. Luckily, between himself and Batgirl, they were largely able to redirect the lines of fire out of harm's way, and come off it with only minor bruising and a few icy-splinters to show for it.

After working their way through the henchmen in the main lobby, they moved swiftly, cutting deeper into the building, trouncing each newly encountered henchmen one by one as they found them.

Robin held his breath when they reached the door to a large vault, sounds of the notorious supervillain monologing to his lackeys from behind.

He gave a signal to Batgirl, mimed a countdown as he readied his smoke bombs, giving her time to restock her Batarangs. Ready as they'd ever be, they bust through the door, each of them rolling into a readied stance.

Instantly, the weapons were trained in their directions, looks of soured grudges on everyone's faces.

"I've no time to entertain children," the infamously coldblooded scientist lurched, charging his freeze cannon.

"You won't get away with this, Freeze!" Robin shouted, filling his chest with bravery as he reflexively repositioned his footing.

As the smoke bombs almost loosed in his hand, he paused; as did the other occupants of the vault.

A white glimmering shape hovered in the center of the room, between them all.

Slowly, it seemed to take form, and dropped into the figure of the little girl.

"Get out of here!" He called, his arm readying his swing.

Batgirl clasped a hand around his wrist, stilling him; "Wait..." she drawled, focusing on the kid.

"What's this?" Mr. Freeze iterated, his tone flat but labored through the helmet glass; "The Bat sends another infant to fight his battles for him?"

Robin's teeth grit at the insult; he tried to push down the feeling, and work out how best to get the little girl out of there.

"My name's Raven," the girl murmured, her voice oddly sure of itself; "You feel sad. Angry. Hurt. I can help. I can heal things."

"Heal things?" the man repeated, gesturing for his men to hold positions.

"I healed Harley. I think I can help you, too," the girl replied, the dim light refracting off her cloak and into the surrounding ice.

"Boss, you don't really think tha-"

"Silence," Freeze bayed, quieting the man; "I've an eternity to live; if this child thinks she can change the course of fate, I'm willing to test it."

"But Boss," another man pleaded, his hands worrying over his gun; "What about the Bat?"

"What do you louts think I'm paying you for? Fan out!" He ordered, sending the men into a flurry.

Robin switched his posture, taking up a normal stance as the henchmen filed out around them, passing them to make their rounds. Four of them remained, their guns aimed at him, Batgirl, and the child.

"Alright child," the villain commanded, his tone colder than his heart; "Heal."

"I need your hand, please," the girl murmured, gesturing to it with her own.

Slowly, likely expecting a trick, the man switched his ray gun into his other hand, and twisted off the glove of his supersuit, revealing the icy blue flesh of the hand inside.

The girl lifted off the ground, hovering towards the man, and put both her tiny hands to the sides of his palm.

The air suddenly felt... slower. As if time wasn't quite up to its usual self somehow; a bright, blue-white glow radiated out from the girl's arms, which seemed to seep onto Freeze's hand and creep up his wrist. The light cast thousands of glimmering reflections into the ice and whirled beautiful, glistening patterns everywhere Robin looked.

The girl seemed to grow tired, or else refocused entirely on her apparent magic, and carried on from a soft landing on the floor.

Moments stretched into minutes, and the minutes started ticking into seconds as the blue glow working its way into Mr. Freeze's flesh spread out through the rest of his body.

As the light consumed the villain's face, Freeze fell to his knees, spooking his henchmen.

Batgirl knocked the but of a gun aimed at her neck away, and Robin quickly handsprung out of the way of a line of bullets gunning for his back.

A Birdarang sliced off a barrel aimed directly at Batgirl's chest, and a well-timed kick from his partner took care of a goon at his side.

They made short work of the rest of the men, leaving them where they fell, and Robin turned to check on the girl.

Both she and Freeze were kneeling now, the blue light almost washing out the villain entirely.

"Should we... stop them?" he asked cautiously; he wasn't sure what to do when it came to magic measures.

"Let's watch a little longer; if nothing else we need to see what she can do," Batgirl replied.

He nodded, and tried to huff some heat back into his hands and resigned himself to waiting once more.

He almost longed for more goons to fight, just to keep his body temperature raised.

"That's what you get for not wearing pants," Barbara chided, earning a scoff.

Just when he was about to suggest walking over to them to inspect the situation up close, the glow vanished.

The little girl and the supervillain both fell backwards, prompting himself and Batgirl to rush forward.

He reached the younger girl first, and lifted her onto his lap as Barbara checked Mr. Freeze.

"Tim, you'll never believe this..." she muttered, her tone conflicted.

She lifted the suited man with a grunt, slumping him into a sitting position.

His skin was a pinkish brown.

"We need to get them out of the cold," he realized, his mind racing with the possibilities of them all freezing.

Freeze started to shake himself, as if rising from a deep sleep.

He pulled himself out of Batgirl's grasp, nearly knocking her away.

Robin stood, drawing a few of his gadgets in hand.

Freeze looked himself over, a look of amazement on his face.

"Incredible," he murmured softly; Robin felt inclined to agree with him.

The look on the man's face hardened.

"I'm taking the child with me," he declared, reaching for the girl.

Batgirl got her first as Robin blasted Freeze's helmet with his smoke pellets.

Batgirl darted out of the line of crossfire as Freeze roared.

"You fools, my Nora needs her!"

Batgirl stopped, looking him dead in the eyes.

He could practically feel what she was thinking about; he was thinking it too.

"Look, Freeze, the kid's all tuckered out," Batgirl scolded, obscured by shadows; "Give her some time to recover. Turn yourself in. Maybe we can work something out."

"I'm not leaving without her," he insisted, "My Nora has waited too long for this; I won't lose her again!"

"You'd really trade the life of a child for your wife, Freeze?" Robin called, hoping to disorient him long enough for Batgirl to sneak out of the vault; "She'd never forgive you!"

"The child is my only chance, please," the man begged, sounds of him stumbling through the smoke echoing through the vault.

A few sounds of scuffle somewhere behind him caught Robin's attention.

"I can help!" a small voice insisted.

"Please," Freeze begged again, likely to the disembodied voice of the girl; "Save my Nora, I'll give you anything! Anything you desire!"

There was a sound of a grunt, and then the sound of Batgirl's footsteps navigating towards him through the darkness.

Batgirl shortly stepped into view, the girl clinging to her neck, who seemed nearly overwashed with exhaustion.

"I want to help," the girl murmured.

"Please," Batgirl begged, "Rest first."

"Either way, we all need to get out of here," Robin reminded, his mind already certain of the damages of the cold being done.

A loud crash echoed throughout the vault as a series of brash and crude declarations apparently collided into the last of Freeze's henchmen.

Robin cast a look to Barbara who looked at him with an equal amount of confusion; she shrugged. Robin turned to Freeze, who seemed wholeheartedly focused on the girl.

In through the vault doors, rushed a pair of multicolored hyenas, and Harley Quinn on a pair of roller skates.

"Chick-a-dee!" Harley sang, "Harl~ley's here!"

The girl in Batgirl's arm started to stir with what little energy she seemed to have remaining.

"This one's mine, Quinn," Freeze declared, turning his attention on the clown.

"No can do, Mr. Blue! That's Ivy's daughter. She's gonna' be real' mad if you don't hand her over," Harley replied chidingly as Bud and Lou growled menacingly.

"I'm sorry Quinn, but I can't let her go," he answered menacingly. 

"Come to Harley, Sugar," the villainous cooed, her voice sickeningly sweet in a way that Robin only knew she used for her hyenas, or for her 'puddin'.

The girl struggled in Barabra's grasp; the girl turned incorporeal and shadowed her way out of Batgirl's arms in an attempt to glide through the air to the Clown Queen of Crime.

"Harley, that girl can save my Nora," Freeze insisted, walking towards them; Harley adjusted her grip on her leashes, setting them both to one arm.

"Tell ya' what, Snowman," Harley offered as the shadow flopped its way into the crook of Harley's arm; the shadow solidified as the girl, who now seemed totally passed out.

"When lil'bit here is good enough for another round of miracle makin', I'll be the first to call yous'," Harley offered, her tone warm; "Jus' don't get no ideas 'bout roughin' her up till then, mind. Maybe find something to sweeten the deal, so's Red'll forgive you."

"Yes... that'll suffice..." the man muttered, resignation frostbitten across his tone and posture.

"Now let's get out of here before we all turn into popsicles," Robin insisted, hoping to spur everyone back into their senses.

Harley Quinn laughed, setting his nerves on edge before Bud and Lou took off at full speed, pulling a complete one-eighty back out the door.

"Should we go after her or..." he drawled, looking after them.

"Let's worry about him for now," Batgirl insisted, already whipping out her cuffs.

At the ensuing struggle, Robin found himself whistling at the sheer oddities of the evening while he drew a few Birdarangs to help Barbara retrain the man.

Batman was going to have a field day with this one, he was sure. 


	9. Chapter 9

It was the blooming of lukewarmness around her tired muscles, that guided her eyelids open; faintly, a blurred blotch of colors clouded her vision, broadly comprised of mellow-reds and yellow-golds.

Her lips fell shut again, as her mind scrambled to piece together the strange sounds encompassing her; it took a few moments for her to realize that the sounds echoing oddly into her were being scattered about by the substance engulfing her.

It took a few moments more to realize that she was nearly submerged, as the sensation of water buffeting her body was nearly identical to her astral trances in the state she was in.

Her body's muscle memory of water vaguely called forth the memory of the baths overseen by her new matron; at the dim recollection of Poison Ivy, the syllables around her began to make sense, their translations coming easier and well defined.

Harley, she felt, was near her too.

The faint warmth in the water only served to make her realize just how cold she was; she was helpless to stop her body from shivering.

_"Can't we make it go any hotter?"_

_"It'd only damage her cells further; we have to raise her temperature slowly, Harl."_

The sounds drifted away again; her body or her mind lessening its grip on her soul.

Meditation came naturally to her, after the innumerable hours she'd spent practicing it on Azarath, for what little good it did them.

It the state of perception between worlds, she was comfortable; at peace.

She watched the movements of the stars glide along dimensional splits and lines of universal threads; the patterns of the globes renewing once or twice under her watch.

Content as she was to rest in the place forever, there was a begrudging part of herself tied to the awareness of her body, that quietly insisted the importance of her physical survival.

Coming into her body was always a bit of an unpleasant shock; being brought into sensory filled appendages and flesh encased awareness was more than a little jarring; Raven sat up, water streaming out from her nostrils and pores, her body taking the opportunity to steal in a few large breaths between the upheavals it took as it ousted the river water from her lungs.

She wiped the water from both of her eyes and smoothed her hair out of her face; when her body calmed, certain in its continuity, she looked around herself.

There was no sign of her overseer's disciple, or of her two laughing beasts, but Raven sensed that the nature goddess was somewhere nearby, which comforted her somewhat.

Raven glanced at herself; her form still clad within the mismatched clothes she vaguely recalled having put on. The flowers in her hair she could see appeared distressed from freezing over and thawing out. She rung out her violet locks a bit, tangled as they were, and noticed the plant she was sitting on.

Ivy it seemed, had left her resting on a great leaf floating in the water; one of the colossal 'lilypads' if she recalled their 'genus' correctly. Carrying her weight as it was, the great leaf bowed only a few inches under the water's crust. She smiled, running her fingers through the surface of the water, pleased to feel the river current trickling against her palm.

The humid air of the greenhouse felt sticky against her back as she sat.

An increasing focus of the sensation of wet cloth clinging to her skin became unbearable for her; Raven clawed it off, leaving herself free as the river carted away the offending garments, catching them on lilyweeds and other plants.

Somewhere in the weeds, there was a 'frog' chirping around the many quiet buzzing of 'dragonflies' flitting about the flowers, leaving the air lightly filled with sound.

She smiled, feeling a bit better; she supposed she could feel warmer, but she'd never felt as warm as she'd like and shrugged the idea off.

Raven let her legs dangle over the edge of the lilypad, the leaf sinking under her shift in weight until the water came up to her chest. She kicked her legs, feeling the long strands of moss between her toes and smiled at the odd feel of it.

She wondered briefly what walking through the water might feel like; Ivy had once mentioned something she called 'swimming'. The thought of trying it out on her own was little unnerving; Raven shifted her thoughts instead to debating whether or not she wanted to climb to the ground and scale her treehouse for new garments.

The idea won out.

Pulling her way up onto the dirt by the handfuls of arching grasses in each of her fists was a little difficult, as the lilypad gave way under her feet, but Raven managed the hoist after a few moments of determination and wasn't bothered by the streaks of dirt she was resultingly covered in; she walked contently through the great flowers, picking her way through paths and boxes and trees.

She wasn't sure where exactly, her treehouse was, but she was confident that she'd find it if she walked around long enough, large as it was.

The smells of the flowers drifted past her, and the many hums of the individual strands of life growing around her were quietly pleasant.

It made crawling through brushes and thorns more ignorable.

She found her treehouse after pushing herself through an entanglement of vines and felt a small cloud of... some sort of emotion she supposed, fill her chest slightly.

The climb up was both shorter than she expected and longer than she would have liked for the effort it took to climb it.

Just as she peered into the drawers of colourful clothes, a strange feeling caught her senses.

She stilled, and focused on it; her eyes blacking over.

Two strange presences, pulsing waves of emotion with every beat of their hearts, descending from the sky.

Ivy's warning flickered to mind, allowing Raven a moment to assess whether she wanted to leave the security of her overseer's sanctuary to her plants or if she wanted to follow the path of the chaotic disciple and charge her own path and investigate matters for herself.

She hastily pulled on her Azarathian tunic and slid down the hole-pole that Harley had shown her.

She pushed into the plants' senses, and felt them coiling about something further into the flowers. She followed the feeling, curious to see what they had caught.

She came to large, rippling bed slithering runners, slowly pulling a man and boy to a throng of pitcher plants, as if they meant to forcibly contain the intruders inside, where according to Ivy, anything trapped might get dissolved and digested.

Though she had no thoughts or feelings about the black-clad man, the boy was dressed strikingly similar to the one she'd cried with.

Their faces looked blank as they noticed her, their bodies expelling feelings of lingering afternoon sunsets and fast-paced city streets, which she took to mean they were thickly at the mercy of turbulent emotions.

Their appendages, torsos, and faces were entrapped by the wrapping vines, while they were unable to speak, it didn't seem to stop them from trying.

Raven thought a minute.

She didn't think it wise to use her powers too much, too soon, but she felt confident enough that she wouldn't have to, and that she'd be largely all right if it came to it; she could simply call out, and Ivy would come to her, she felt.

Her curiosity prompted her to reach out, and pry the vines away from the boy's face.

"You're a wrong Robin," she declared, looking him over; he looked older than the other boy, and his suit wasn't quite the same.

"I'm the first Robin," the boy declared, a weird range of emotions radiating from him.

"I'm Raven," she replied, reflexively following the earthly script of conversation.

"You're just the girl we wanted to see," the boy replied, as the man beside him continued to struggle.

Raven squinted at him; deciding that if he did anything to hurt her matron's plants, she'd stop him.

"My brother tells me that you helped Mr. Freeze a few days ago," the boy proclaimed, his tone weightless but his face smiling.

"I wanted to help," she replied evenly, thinking. He felt like soft cats or sleeping hyenas; Raven decided that was an agreeable aura.

His face lit up a bit, leading Raven to believe that he was pleased at her response; "It's good to want to help, helping people is important," he stated, wiggling a bit, "We came here actually, because we wanted to help you."

"Who are you?" Raven asked, looking from him to the man still struggling in vain against the plants.

"I'm Robin, like I said," he repeated, "My brother, the boy you met, was Red Robin, and the girl in black and purple was Batgirl. We work with Batman," he explained, nodding at the man beside him as much as the plants allowed; "We help save people in the city. Right now, we want to help save you."

Raven wasn't sure what exactly, the man and boy meant to save her from, but the mention of the 'bat' in the man's name caught her attention.

"Aunt Kitty said the Bat was big and brave and wise," she recited, a hint of excitement in her fingertips; "She said he couldn't catch her no matter how fast he flied but he was always there to break her fall. She said he keeps all of Gotham under his wings and chases all the monsters away so everyone can sleep at night."

"Aunt Kitty?" the boy repeated.

"Miss Whiskers," Raven offered confusedly; "Aunt Selina."

"Selina," he repeated, more intently than before.

Raven nodded; she didn't know how the boy couldn't know whom she was referring to, but guessed that maybe the city had so many people, it was hard for the boy to remember them all. It seemed a strange thought, as the people she'd known in Azarath had all seemed to know each other.

"Can you let me down?" the boy asked gently.

Raven thought about it.

She bit her lip.

The boy smiled warmly.

She reached out her arms and touched near the Green place, to eat the fear of the flowers. The flower's calmed, dropping the boy to the floor and started to settle themselves.

The boy dusted himself off and ruffled his hair a bit, hunching over at his knees before smiling at her.

"What are you helping me from?" she asked, still unsure as to his function.

"There's a lot of bad people in Gotham," he replied gently, "A lot of sick people who'll want to hurt you, or use you, or both. We want to keep you safe from them, and help you get back to where you belong."

"I belong in Hell," she answered flatly; the boy's face paled and his emotions cooled greatly. She didn't know why he was disturbed by her honest answer or why she felt bad for his feeling bad for it. 

"I prefer the flowers better," she added distractingly, lifting her arms up to reference the flowers around them; she hoped he knew she was referring to them, but with the boy's seemingly slow nature, she didn't want to assume.

"Ivy and Harley are unwell people," he murmured quietly, "You don't have to stay with them. We can take you home."

"I have a new home now," Raven replied, crossing her arms the way she'd seen Ivy move them for dramatic effect; "I like it. It has dolls and a giraffe and hole I can slide down."

"What about your old home, your real family?" he pressed. 

"They're dead."

The boy's face paled again, and the boy's aura started to seep deeply into a cold and almost colorless blue of sorrow.

"My old parents are dead too," he revealed.

Raven wasn't sure what to do with the information, but the boy was smiling sadly like it was some sort of gift; she dropped her arms from her chest.

"I know what it's like to be scared and alone, and what's it's like trying to find a new home. Come with us Raven, let me help you find that new home."

Raven stepped back, the back of her neck raising like the hackles of Harley's hyenas.

"I like it here. They're nice to me."

The boy's smile faltered a bit; he seemed genuinely sad for her, and Raven couldn't figure out why, and it was starting to make her body react.

"These women aren't nice," Robin countered gently, falling to his knees to even their faces, he took her hands his own; "These women are sick Raven, they hurt people for terrible plans, and sometimes just for fun; they may not seem like it now, but they'll teach you horrible things, and make you  _do_  horrible things. They won't be able to help it, it's the sicknesses inside of their heads they can't get better from."

"I don't want to lose any mothers again," Raven whispered, as she tried to ignore how cold her insides felt.

Her eyes started to tear up; around them, plants became encased in her soulself, through no intentional action of her own.

The sight of her own powers acting on their own accord made her heart start beating faster and stung her eyes; she bit her lip to keep it from trembling and tried to keep her chin lifted.

"Okay," the boy replied, surprising her.

The boy put his hands on her shoulders and grinned warmly again, his aura a glowing yellow-morning of comfortable weather.

"Please," she pleaded, "I need them."

"Why?" he pushed, almost as desperate as herself.

Her body's disquiet started to leak into her head; she felt herself too shaken to adequately articulate the impending struggle she'd reach with her father.

"We won't take you away, you don't have to worry," he soothed; she fell into him and locked her arms around his neck as the tears started flowing freely down her cheeks; the plants snapped and flickered wildly around the glade, helpless in the throes of her soul.

She let her eyes fall shut and sobbed.

She didn't know which thought was more painful, that the boy thought her overseers were wicked, or that he thought she was a good person.

"What is this meaning of this, Batman," Ivy's voice called gravely, breaking Raven out of the trance-like state of sadness.

Raven turned her head in time to see her overseer stepping into the glade, her aura a flashy hot rage, her face scowling closely.

"Get away from her," she seethed at the boy, frightening him back.

The boy pulled her with him, unwilling apparently, to let her go.

Ivy seemed to ignore him afterward, in favor of the man clad in black.

The apparent Batman freed a hand and started to cut at the vines that bound him, prompting a growl from Ivy.

The plants retreated in pain from the man, and he dropped to the ground, a small cloud of dust puffing up at his feet.

"Whatever you're planning Isley," the black-clad man growled, "End it, let the girl go free."

"I'm not holding her hostage," Ivy proclaimed, stepping forward, her aural form braced and swollen as if she were drawing power from the Earth to appear more mighty than she was; "She's mine now. She has no one else. She has nowhere else to go."

"What makes you think you're fit to raise a child?" he challenged.

"What makes you think  _you_  are?" she countered; her tone was dark, and made Raven think that maybe the Robins had something to do with the remark. 

"You'll poison her Ivy," the man insisted, bringing himself to his full height; the horns on his skull were frightful, Raven thought.

"She's not human," Ivy replied, growing more visibly off-put by the man; "She's safe with me."

"Is she?" the man pressed, "Will she be so safe when Victor comes after her? The man's more deranged than ever, Ivy. He's sick with feverous impulses, he'll stop at  _nothing_  to get at the girl, to bring his wife back."

"We had a deal," Ivy stated a little less intently; her aura seemed to flicker; "Raven will help Nora when she's ready."

"And if she can't? What then?" he questioned dryly.

"Your questions are starting to irritate me, Batman," Ivy dismissed, calling her plants to her arms; "I suggest you take your prototype progeny and get out of my home while you still have feet to carry you," she warned.

The man retreated a few steps, and paused; he looked at her, giving Raven a strange sort of impression that he was both very mighty, and very sad.

Batman looked back to the woman.

"I hope, for both your sakes," he growled, "You can take this chance to make things work. I'll be watching you, Isley. I'll find you again, if you don't follow this child's best interests."

Ivy stiffened.

The man pulled the Robin to him, and raised his hand into the air, and a loud, alarming crack rang out through the flowers.

When Raven opened her eyes and pulled her hands from her ears, the man and his boy were gone.


	10. Chapter 10

“Maybe we shoulda' kept Batsy around a bit longer…” Harley wondered aloud.

 

“What was that?” Ivy asked, not having fully processed Harley’s words.  

 

“Do you think she’s lonely Red?” Harley keened, “We should find her a playmate.”

 

“She has your mongrels,” Ivy retorted absently, as she shifted through her stack of notes, having caught onto the conversation.

 

At the woman’s responding huff, Ivy turned to glance over at the girl, who was reading on the floor, flanked on either side by Bud and Lou.

 

In a breath, Ivy questioned if perhaps her partner had a point.

 

“Doesn’t Deadshot have a daughter?” Ivy wondered aloud, turning to the bottle-blonde.

 

“I thinks’ so,” Harley agreed; “I heard Eddie’s gotta’ niece or somethin’,” she murmured on, tapping her chin in thought; “I know one of Kitty’s frenemies got a new son, that Jason boy from the papers.”

 

“Nocturna?” Ivy guessed, the memory of the newsreel dim in her mind; “She took one of Wayne’s wards.”

 

“The redhead,” Harley agreed, “-Tho somethin’ tells me he’ll darken with age,” she chirruped.

 

Ivy exhaled heavily and sat back in her chair.

 

“I’m more pressed about the Bat, at the moment,” Ivy admitted grudgingly, “Truth be told.”  

 

“What’s ta’ worry ‘bout?” Harley drawled as she looped her arms around Ivy’s neck; Ivy patted them absently with her free hand as Harley used her head as a chin rest.

 

“I’m probably just being silly,” Ivy agreed; she exhaled lightly and tapped Hayley’s arm once more before getting up from the desk; “I just wanted a little while longer with her, before he found out, I suppose.”  

 

“Worrywort,” Harley agreed gently, her smile warm as she pressed a kiss to Ivy’s nose.

 

Ivy hummed, somewhat in allotment; “Victor called again today. He’s getting impatient.”

 

“So?” Harley asked; “What’s Frosty got ta’sweetn’ the deal?”

 

Ivy glanced over to the still unassuming child before glancing back to Harley; she leaned in, prompting Harley to do the same.

 

“Ten grand’,” Ivy answered quietly; as Harley’s eyes grew wide, Ivy gestured her to keep quiet and continued; “With five up front, already wired.”

 

“Are we hurtin’ for money, Red?” Harley asked gently, her tone quietly somber.

 

“Of course not Peanut,” Ivy reassured, rubbing the woman’s shoulder fondly; “But children are expensive, and money never hurts.”

 

Harley seemed to think it over a second before nodding agreeing.

 

“The money was a nice touch, he’s throwing it in because he knows that _we know_ he’s good for it, seems how you crossed him in the bank. What he’s really offering is a free favor.”

 

“Aww, gee, no diamonds or _anything_?” Harley lamented.

 

“Something tells me that favors will only come in handy the further we get on,” Ivy replied; “And I want to get this over with sooner than later, before Fries gets a little less gentlemanly about things.”  

 

“Are ya, sure? Lil’ tyke’s just got over all her frostbite,” Harley noted; her eyes darting over to the girl and back again.

 

“I’ve explained to Vic that it might take a couple tries, to get the best results for Nora, and for the safety of the child. -He’ll abide by the circumstances or find himself one popsicle short of a stand, if he’s not careful.”

 

“I think his stock melted a long time ago, Red,” Harley quipped.

 

“Anyway, I’m going to start the car; if you’ll get Raven and fetch the blankets?” Ivy prompted, placing a kiss of her own against Harley’s cheek before stepping past her.

 

Harley slapped a quick, affectionately placed smack on the exiting woman’s rump before trodding over to the living room floor.

 

“Heyya’ chic-a-dee,” Harley sang; the way all three little faces lifted up to look at her, made Harley’s heart all a little flutter. She smiled and angled her hands on hips.

 

“We gotta’ play with the Ice-scream man,” Harley explained; “You wanna put yer’ book away or take it with you?”

 

Raven looked back to the textbook littered with Ivy’s old penmarks before picking it up; she closed it and set it on the nearest endtable, stumbling to keep herself from getting bowled over by her boys’ inquisitive noses.

 

“Chop-pop!” she trilled, clapping her hands and holding them out.

 

The girl meandered back over and allowed herself to be scooped up; the boys were understandably interested in also getting picked up.

“Sorry boys, Momma’s gotta grab some snuggelies,” she placated, patting them consolingly as she ignored their attempts to jump up and climb into her arms.  

 

Harley grabbed the comforter dragging almost halfway off the couch, and paused long enough to stoop down and grab the girl’s cape, which she’d left along the back of the armchair.

 

She whistled as she walked to the garage, Bud and Lou hot on her heels.

 

“Rosebud” was already hot and trembling, idly waiting as a freshly coat-donned Ivy finished loading what looked to be an extra suitcase of supplies into the ‘secret’ undercarriage compartment.

 

“Dibs on-”

 

“You’re _not_ driving,” Ivy insisted flatly, as she removed an empty nitro canister from the back.

 

“...Shotgun,” Harley huffed.

 

After regaining her merry spirits, Harley slapped the side of the truck twice and whistled.

 

Bud and Lou expertly lept up into the truck bed, using the lip of the truck’s hitch as a leverage point.

 

While her babies scrambled around, making themselves comfortable as they joyfully anticipated going on a car ride, Harley wormed her way into the passenger seat, stuffed the blankets behind the seats, and settled the kid on her lap.

 

A few minutes later, Ivy slid into the driver’s seat and looked them over.

 

“All set?” she asked.

 

Harley clicked her tongue and popped a thumbs up; Ivy took hold of the gear stick to move it out of park, prompting Harley to tighten one arm around the child in her lap and the other around her affectionately named ‘Oh-shit!’ suicide handle.

 

Much to Harley’s annoyance, Ivy didn’t reflexively floor it, so Harley took a breath and relaxed against her seat as Ivy flicked on the radio.

 

At the instant flooding of news reports caterwauling across the frequency, Ivy grumbled and twiddled the knob until actual music swept in.

 

The drive was pleasant enough; with the lack of a proper roof, they were all free to let the wind breeze through their hair and in the cases of Bud and Lou, lull their tongues over the sills.

 

“How does this ‘tv’ move?”

 

“It’s called a tran-sper-tational vehicle,” Harley explained to the kid, in her faux-doctor voice; “It’s a truck. It runs on gas.”

 

“What’s gas?”

 

“About three-fifty a gallon,” Ivy answered absently.

 

“In Azarath-”

 

“Everything ran on magic, yes,” Ivy finished; “This is Earth now, Sweetpea,” she chided, “Everything runs on fossil fuels and the blood of the working class.”   

“I hear solar is taking off in Metropolis,” Harley chimed in conversationally.

 

“When there’s a sunny day in Gotham, tell me about it,” Ivy huffed.

 

“I like to think we’re stuck in some kinda’ timey-wimey placey paradox myself,” Harley replied, gesturing with the hand from the handle; “Feels kinda liminal, is all.”

 

“It  _is_ weird actually,” Raven murmured, not-quite surprising either of the women; “The city is on top of an old magic place, way down, very down. Deep. That’s how come I landed here. I followed the lines.”  

 

“Huh, ya’ know, I figure Strange said somethin’ ‘bout Arkham bein’ haunted. Magic in the walls and all,” Harley mused.

 

“Let’s not talk about Arkham right now, please,” Ivy begged off; “I’ve had enough of that place for several lifetimes.

 

“What’s Arkham?” Raven asked innocently.

 

“It’s a place to put people to forget about ‘em,” Harley replied sternly before brightening up in an almost comically unsettling fashion; “It’s home away from home!”

 

“Harley,” Ivy warned; “Later.”

 

Harley sighed and settled Raven closer against her.

 

A few moments went by, before Raven ventured to speak up again.

 

“First-Acolyte-Robin said that you two weren’t to be trusted, and that you being nice to me is an outlier not to be counted.”  

 

Harley’s reply was an elongated, eloquent fart noise, made with her mouth.

 

Ivy smiled.

 

* * *

  


The not-so-abandoned Ice Cream Factory where Freeze holed himself up when not steeping in his misery in Arkham was just about as depressing as Harley and Ivy remembered it being.

 

“Gee, could use a few coats of paint, huh Red?”

 

“And some bulldozing wouldn’t hurt,” Ivy agreed, turning the engine to a halt.

 

Harley popped her door open while Ivy fiddled with the keys; Bud and Lou eagerly raced around the truck bed until Harley motioned for them to hop out, by which time Ivy was behind her, with the blanket tossed over her shoulder.

 

“Come here, Larkspur,” Ivy crooned, prompting Harley to wait as Ivy affixed the child’s cape about her neck.

 

“Alright, let’s go,” she urged; “Victor gets cranky left waiting.”

 

“I’ll say,” Harley agreed.

 

The guards at the stairs recognized them instantly, and for once, as the women were invited guests, allowed them uninterrupted passage through the front doors.

 

“Brrr,” Harley chitted, shivering at the instant change in temperature.

 

“You could have put on a jacket,” Ivy chided lazily, “Or any sort of real clothes.”

 

“Blasphemous!” Harley quipped, “This booty is too cutie to cover up!”

 

Rather than argue the point of the matter, Ivy simply draped the blanket over the blonde’s shoulders.

 

“That’ll have to do for now,” Ivy murmured; “I’ll give you my coat when we get back to the car,” she promised quietly.

 

Harley hummed.

 

“And Raven, best behavior, little bird,” Ivy warned.

 

“Okie-dokey,” the girl replied, the phrase obviously one picked up from the woman carrying her.    

 

Some of Freeze’s henchmen directed them to the main front office, where the man turned out to have been waiting for them.

 

He seemed as grim as ever, but his refined abject state of melancholy seemed almost defrosted, as far as either villainess could tell.

 

“Welcome, child,” Victor greeted morosely; his grin was tired and eyes were dim.

 

“Hi-ya’ Frech-Frise!” Harley quipped happily, unperturbed; “Nice ta’ see ya’ not so blue!”

 

“Yes. The… child’s powers are something quite remarkable,” Freeze admitted, as he looked himself over.  

 

“The transformation was perhaps unsuspected but one still appreciated, with time,” he continued. “It will take some getting used to. I hope the revival of my Nora, will help ease the recovery,” he added.

 

“Remember,” Ivy warned, her hand perched firmly on Harley’s shoulder; “Patience Victor.”

 

“Yes, yes,” he agreed, his words labored; “I’ll not harm the girl Pamala. I’ve waited so long… I can afford to get it right.”

 

Ivy looked him over for a moment, in a silent test of wills, before nodding once; she squeezed Harley’s shoulder softly, before withdrawing her hand.

 

“Come this way please, my Nora is down this hall, in my labs,” the man insisted; "Though I implore you to leave your canines here."

 

"Bud, Lou?" Harley cooed at the boys, "Momma's gotta go. You stay here, okie dokie?" 

 

A few henchmen bravely offered to keep them entertained, with well-meaning dog toys in hand.

 

At the sight of a tennis ball, one of the henchmen was quickly bowled over: Harley laughed and bid the group farewell, before nodding at Freeze to continue on.  

 

There was little way of a tour, as they went, but at Raven’s odd question or two, the villains were want enough to supply answers to her; after a quick rundown of what the building was, and what some of the more noticeable machines were, Raven pried loose the man’s tale of tragedy.

 

Harley stiffened her lips and tried to keep from getting watery eyed; matters of lovers were always something of a tender spot for the woman. Ivy however, remained largely unbothered; she supposed on some level she was more or less pleasantly inclined enough to wish the couple well, but she wasn’t close to the man or his wife, and was generally disinclined towards people in general.

 

Raven seemed the most affected; a state which Harley noticed absently as clutched the girl more tightly to her, to help keep out the cold.

 

Victor himself, was sporting a thick coat and winter apparel; caught somewhere between his previous subzero state and a complete return to normalcy as the man was, Harley internally wondered how the transition was affecting him.   

 

They were well into the labs, by the time Freeze had finished his overt lament for his nearly-late wife.

 

“Though my hands are no longer of subzero state,” he breathed, as his hand pressed against his wife’s cryo-pod; “I am still as far from my wife as any glass between us.”

 

“Alright Feathers,” Harley chirped, “Down you go~” she sang, as she let the girl slide onto the floor.

 

“When you get tired,” Ivy instructed, “Stop.”

 

“Yes Mam,” Raven responded, her attention already turned to the woman floating suspended in the tank before them all.

 

Freeze stepped away, allowing the child to pass him by.

 

Though Harley’s attention quickly began to wander about the hidden lab, Ivy remained focused on the child, and the villain standing quietly some feet behind her.

 

Raven’s tiny hands pressed against the glass; from behind her as she was, Ivy took note of the girl’s spiraling indigo curls. She made a mental note to spend some time thawing out the strands, as the child’s hair was already sporting spots of frost.

 

“Can she come out of the glass?” Raven asked, turning to the man.

 

“No,” he answered cleanly.

 

Raven took the man at his word, and faced the frozen woman once more.

 

The room seemed to dim, ever so slightly.

 

The electronics and various sensors recording Nora’s data failed to sound any alarm, but the atmosphere seemed to grow heavy and thick; the girl seemed to be drawing some kind of power to herself, that had nothing to do with sockets or wires.     

 

The child melted into a shadowy mass; still pressed up to the glass as it was, the quivering and nearly transient flicker of darkness would have been unsettling to witness, had the hardened criminals in the room not been so used to being immersed in the stranger ways of Gotham City.  

 

Harley’s consoling hand to Victor’s shoulder likely didn’t hurt matters either, as far as either of the grown women were concerned.

 

Raven’s shadowy state melted through the glass; Harley’s hands kept Freeze from rushing the pod, though the man stilled when the last of the shadow melted into the tank, revealing the child’s body left standing motionless outside the tank.

 

Inside the surrounding fluids, the shadow curled around Nora, and melted into her.

 

The tank waters seemed to grow black, for a moment, before a bright and familiar white-blue light illuminated from within, bathing the now extremely darkened lab in a faint luminous glow.

 

Ivy leaned against a nearby countertop.

 

Harley slowly coaxed Victor into sitting down, nearer to the edge of the room, where his emotions were less likely to cause the child any interference.   

 

She seemed to pulse in stages; spending just shy of three minutes in the tank before returning to her body to breathe and going back again.

 

Then it was five minutes.

 

Then seven.

 

Then eight.

 

At length, Raven managed to work in intervals just shy of ten minutes, where she then spent several seconds returned to her body, huffing panting breaths and bracing herself against the glass before going back again.

 

“Hey Viccy,” Harley chimed, breaking the man out of his silent and watchful reverie.

 

“Got any cocoa in tha’ joint?” she nodded at the kid and then gestured to her self; “Baby’s gonna be chilly and Mamma could use a hot tottie.”

 

The villain beckoned at his henchman, and a few of them retreated out of the lab and returned some thirty minutes later, pushing carts of steaming hot entrees and freshly brewed drinks.

 

Harley helped herself to a peppermint schnapps infused cocoa, while Ivy seemed reluctant to investigate any of the platters. As if in retaliation, Harley assembled a plate for herself, and one for Ivy, and brought it to the plant woman directly.

 

The hot water capped with squeezed lemon was not the most exciting drink Ivy had ever imbibed, but the warmth was refreshing, and helped melt the chill from her chlorophyll lined blood.

 

When at last, Raven pulled herself back into her body, and stayed there, the light in the lab brightened to its original state, and the atmosphere felt open and airy once more.

 

Inside the pod, Nora began to thrash.

 

Immediately, her husband was at the glass, prying it open as from around everyone in the room, alarms and frenzied systematic errors began to pile up.  

 

Swiftly, Ivy pulled Raven off the floor, so she wouldn’t be trodd on in Freeze’s pointedly focused retrieval.

 

She passed the girl off to Harley and helped rearrange the blanket about them both, which was made difficult by Harley’s emotional investment in the scene, as she kept trying to peak over shoulders and squirm around for a better view.

 

Ivy stepped to Harley’s side, and turned to take in the scene herself.

 

Victor sat on the floor, his wife in arms; the pair of them seemed weak, as if they were still thawing into themselves.

 

Around them, henchman scurried about, re-setting the machines and ferrying supplies in and out of the lab.

 

One of them stopped long enough to usher the supervillainesses and their young charge back up the stairs and into a repurposed breakroom, where they took seats on the couches.

 

As the women rubbed warmth back into their limbs, the henchman lit up the fireplace, and promised to return with more blankets and hot beverages, before scurrying off again.

 

“Should we go or…” Ivy mused.

 

“What’s tha’ point in doin’ a good deed if you don’t stick around for it?” Harley countered happily; she propped her feet up on the coffee table and released Raven, who wrapped in the blanket, tiredly scuttled over to the fireplace.

 

The girl thankfully didn’t edge too close, and the fireplace had a descent of grate that neither Harley nor Ivy felt the need to rattle off any warnings.

 

They waited for what seemed like hours, huddled in the small but admittedly cozy room, waiting for Freeze and his bride to emerge.

 

The henchman at least, were true to their words and kept their mugs brimming with warmed liquids and their fire well stoked.

 

When at last, Victor strode gently through the doors, Harley had to prod Ivy, who’d started to doze.

 

“How is she, Doc?” Harley asked brightly.

 

“Stable,” he answered; “As you said, Nora and I will likely need… another round, of the child’s tending, and while the disease is still corrupting her body, it has been regressed to a previous stage. One that I’m confident I can crush before it takes root again,” he promised ruthlessly; “But for now, she is resting,” he continued, his tone melting, “And for the first time in several long years, I was able to hold my beloved wife’s hand, and watch her smile as she drifted into sleep.”

 

“I have you and your child to thank for that,” he murmured.

 

Strange as it was, for Harley and Ivy to see the man display such an aura of hope-filled humanity, neither villainess seemed pressed to break the moment.

 

Fries looked over to the girl on the floor.

 

“Is the child well?”

 

“I’m awake,” mumbled the girl, clearly exhausted.

 

“I know I promised you a favor, but I’d like to give the child something as well,” Freeze proposed to the women; “For giving me the gift of my Nora.”

 

The man pulled something from his coat; catching the glint of firelight on the glass, Ivy quickly bade the girl to sit up.

 

Raven righted herself as Victor walked over, kneeled, and placed the trinket before her.

 

“I’ve no need of this now,” the man said smoothly, “Perhaps… It will bring you some joy, and find new purpose.”

 

Raven peaked out from the blanket, and drank in the sight of the tiny figure inside the glass; there were great feelings of longing seeped into the structure, which she felt empathetically.

 

“Do you see the key, there?” Freeze asked; “Turn it.”

 

Raven obediently wound the key, and then watched in amazement as the figure inside started to dance.  

 

Victor rose, and regarded the two woman before him.

 

“I’ll have some… cookies sent up,” he offered awkwardly, “You are of course free to stay as long as you wish.”

 

“And the last part of our agreement,” Ivy interjected calmly, “If you would be so kind.”

 

“Yes, of course,” Freeze agreed; “I’ll have it wired presently.”

 

“Thank you,” Ivy replied, nodding.

 

The man looked torn for a moment, caught between the idea of socializing somewhat, and the overwhelming exhaustion written across his features.

 

He compromised by taking up a vacant armchair, and traded good-natured conversation with Harley until the evening wore on; Raven seemed as delighted by the cookies as she had been the toy, and it wasn’t long before the warmth of her freshly given hot cocoa lulled the girl to sleep.

 

The adults spent a few hours more, chatting amiably, before Ivy bid the man good night and collected the slumbering Raven in her arms; the treasured music box tucked tightly to her chest.

 

Ivy took the passenger seat, and Harley found herself pleasantly surprised and mildly concerned that the prolonged chill had nullified Ivy’s fussing nature; the way the redhead looked with the kid tucked under her chin however, was enough to brighten Harley’s smile, and thrum her underbreathed humming higher by a few happy notes.   


	11. Chapter 11

Harley bolted upright. 

Everything was dark, and though the solid presence of Ivy slumbering beside her was groundingly reassuring, Harley couldn’t help but tremble as she succumbed to the feeling that something was very, very wrong. 

As a master criminal, Harley was used to listening to her gut instincts; she wasted no time in attempting to ignore her sensibilities. 

Ivy was hard to rouse, but the woman obediently slipped into the defensive as she took note of Harley’s demeanor and tightly drawn lips.  

Ivy sat up slowly; she glanced around the darkened room carefully, but found nothing apparent in her scan. 

“What’s wrong,” Ivy then said, quietly. 

“I heard somethin’,” Harley insisted; “An’ besides, everythin’… feels strange, doesn’t it?”

Ivy seemed to agree with her, because the woman quickly slipped to her feet; her breath was faintly visible, by a faint light seeping in from the hall.   

“...I feel it too,” Ivy replied, her body still geared in alert. 

“The Bat don’t feel like this,” Harley observed, as Ivy tugged on a nightgown; “Maybe it’s the professor?” 

“If Crane was here Pea-nut, we’d already be asphyxiating,” the woman countered. 

“ _ Please _ , I used to sniff his shit for fun,” Harley deflected.

“ _ Used _ to,” Ivy repeated firmly. 

Harley conceded the point and slid off the bed herself.

“Bud n’ Lou ain’t barking,” Harley noted, her tone low and wary. 

“Be ready for anything,” Ivy warned; Harley nodded and grabbed for the well-worn baseball bat she kept at the headboard.   

The pair strutted into the hall, grim determination riddled across each of their faces. 

“...Does something smell burning to you?” Harley asked. 

Instantly, Ivy was awash in panic; the woman raced into the direction of her garden. 

Harley tried to keep up, but even at her most determined, she found herself some few paces behind. 

Ivy’s blood-curdling scream, told Harley that Ivy’s worst nightmare was once again, an unfortunate reality.  

Harley arrived in time to see Ivy fiddling frantically with the electrical box that controlled most of the garden’s automated processes; with likely intent to override the watering schedules to turn on the overhead sprinklers. 

From behind the glass doors, Harley could make out the tell-tale orange glow of firelight spreading through the greenery; she felt sickened. 

It always seemed that no matter how long they layed low, or to what extents they tried, that something would always inevitably blow their efforts back into their faces, Harley mourned. 

As Harley through about the injustice of it all, a shadow darting through the cultivated jungle caught her attention. 

“HEY!” Harley screeched, “Get back here!”

She pushed through the doors and bolted inside, intent on obtaining the intruder, and beating some answers out of them.

Ivy followed close behind, murmuring worriedly to herself about which specimens she’d be forced to choose over the others and promises of retributional bodily harm to the fire’s perpetrator.    

The redhead yelped as she spotted one of her favored flowering crossbreeds crumpling under the heat of the flames, and made to dash towards it. 

Harley grabbed her arm tightly and dragged her onwards unapologetically; she’d learnt from past experience that saving plants not yet in the fires reach was the only option that saved more than one plant or two at all. 

“Come on Red, we gotta’ catch tha’ bastard!” she cried, “-And find the kid!” 

Ivy murmured the child’s name, as if remembering partially that she existed; Harley drug her down the path, fully intent on outspeeding the flames.

Ivy’s weight shifted, and Harley nearly whiplashed from the change of momentum as Ivy dug in her heels; Harley turned to get a better grip on the woman’s arm, but was surprised as Ivy pointed to something above them and screeched. 

The tree, thicker around then most Harley had ever seen, was incoming practically on top of them, spinning from the sheer heat of the flames billowing up its barkcoated body.

During the seconds Harley was dumbstruck watching their impending death race up to meet them, Ivy bowled her over, in an effort to lessen the impact as much as possible. 

It was therefore, a startling revelation then, when the impact did not come. 

Cautiously, Harley creaked open her eyes to see the tree fallen around them; it was almost spatially impossible, the way that it was positioned. 

But it’s non-Euclidean nature almost paled in comparison, to the way Ivy was quite literally, standing inside the thick of the flames, without so much as wincing. 

“It’s not real,” Harley mused, as she watched Ivy inspect the flames further, before moving on to look after the supposedly burning foliage around them.  

“Who would go through the trouble of making this an illusion?” Ivy asked.   

“Doesn’t Zanna make illusions?” Harley wondered uneasily, her mind recalling the provocatively clad magician. 

“Her’s aren’t… flat,” Ivy disregarded, as she stepped out of the harmless inferno. 

“Neither is Hatter’s,” Harley added, her brain-wheels already spinning further along; “Tho his aren’t really magic, more like suggestions and stuff I think.” 

“...Do you think,” Ivy began quietly, before her posture brightened; “The kid,” she stated flatly. 

“To the treehouse!” Harley belted in agreement; relief started to mix with the adrenalin in her bloodstream, causing Harley to feel a little less coordinated than she’d have liked, as she and Ivy traversed through the jungle growth once more.    

More flickering shadows darted across their path and hovered around their peripherals, but the ladies now paid them no mind. 

When they reached the treehouse, Harley fought a shiver; the tree felt as though it was shrouded in a sense of foreboding misery. 

She clicked her tongue and decided she rather liked it, in a mild haunted-house sort of way what with its’ screams and abyss-like darkness lurking behind the windows. 

Some of the sounds caught the forefront of Harley’s attention. 

“Babies!” she screeched, recognizing the whines of her beloved hyenas. 

Ivy wasted no time with the ladder, electing instead to ride a vine up to the tiny porch while Harley scrambled up the rungs as fast as she could muster. 

Bud and Lou were thankfully alright, their whines and troubled postures huddled on the child’s bed as they tried desperately to soothe the child floating stilly above her bed, powerless to ease her apparently-troubled sleep as they nipped at her nightclothes. 

Ivy shooed the beasts off the bed to climb onto it herself, Harley quickly following after. 

The girl was shaking, and while she wasn’t tossing or turning, Raven hissed and growled intermittently, intermixed with sobbing gasps and incoherent mumbling that might have been in some unearthly language. 

Harley tried to focus on keeping her head clear, despite her heart clogging her throat. 

“Come on, wake up,” Ivy prompted, her tone gentle but firm; she placed her hand delicately against Raven’s shoulder but refrained from shaking her. 

“Wake up Sweetie,” Harley added, as Bud and Lou nosed their ways into her lap. 

Ivy frowned as the girl remained in the grim throes of her nightmare. 

“Raven,” Ivy called, her tone more insistent as objects floating around the room began to wobble and distort.

Raven fell to the bed; a scream tore itself from deep inside Raven’s body.

Raven heaved upright, her many eyes flashing open a raw scarlet; black formless matter ripping itself from her throat. 

“Raven calm down, it’s okay,” Ivy ordered pleadingly, “We’re here, Buttercup.”

The skin around the girl’s brow began to prickle and spike into two blackened horns. 

“Fight it Birdie,” Harley insisted, as she wrapped her arms around the child; “You can do it!” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay love, we’re here,” Ivy pressed; Raven growled a sound that sent the hyenas scampering to the edges of the room.

“Harley’s got ya’, too!” she reinforced, as the kid started to shake again. 

Raven murmured something, the syllables layered against each other as if her voice had been broken into pieces. 

Ivy shot Harley a look, one that said it was something to make note of. 

“It’s okay, we got you,” Harley repeated more gently to the girl, as she rocked her slightly. 

Raven began to settle back against Harley’s chest; Ivy leaned closer to lay a hand on the girl’s face. 

“More bad dreams, little bird?” Ivy asked. 

Raven refused to meet Ivy’s eyes; Ivy shot another shared glance to Harley, confirming the question, before looking back at the girl again. 

Though none of them were strangers to nightmares, this was the first instance things had been so… intense, from the little girl. 

Ivy ran her hand through Raven’s thick curly locks while Harley settled Raven more comfortably into her lap. 

“...Memories,” the girl eventually said, before falling silent.

Bud and Lou crept back to the bed and cautiously put their front paws on the bedsheets, eager to join themselves. 

“Raven, darling,” Ivy began, “please put the furniture down.” 

“I can’t… turn them off,” Raven replied tersely; the girl seemed exhausted and lost in her own thoughts. 

“I’m sure it’ll all come down when it’s ready,” Harley replied dismissively.

“Would you like us to sit with you, until you feel better?” Ivy asked. 

Raven didn’t respond, but lifted her tilted head enough that Ivy could make out the tremble of her lips, as she nodded. 

“Alright,” Ivy agreed; she settled herself next to Harley and let one hand fall to Raven’s arm, where her thumb made a few comforting circles on the girl’s skin. 

“You don’t have to be afraid of nothin’ no more Suger,” Harley asserted helpfully, “You got us.”

“Yes,” Ivy agreed, as lifted her hand to stroke Raven’s cheek, “You have us. You’re alright. It’s safe here.”

“And you have the boys, and you have Auntie Whiskers, and Uncle Freeze, and lot’s’a others out there who care about you that you haven’t even met yet, ” Harley added dismissively; she patted the bed and whistled a quick note to invite the hyenas to join them. 

Ivy begrudgingly made room by adjusting her legs, but seemed content enough when the pair finally settled.    

Raven didn’t seem as convinced as either of them would’ve liked, inciting them to share another concerned glance between themselves. 

“Do you wanna talk about it, Little Bird?” Ivy asked, wondering if the girl’s troubled memories were once again of “bad men” and “Azarath”. 

Raven shook her head. 

“Should we bring her back to our room?” Harley asked.

“Just for tonight,” Ivy agreed, surprising the woman; “She has to get used to being on her own.” 

“Maybe bein’ on her own is causin’ the terrors, Red,” Harley pressed gently, concerned. 

Ivy exhaled a labored breath that was just as tired existentially as it was physically; she wondered if she should have procured a manual of some sort for childrearing. 

“Maybe we should take her to the professor,” Harley suggested; glancing around the room; “If anyone knows about pasts and fears it's him.”  

“Perhaps,” Ivy agreed, eyeing the disarray of the treehouse; “Let’s get all this cleaned up first.”


	12. Chapter 12

Professor Crane woke with a grumble and string of mumbled curses; while he was by no means a man of a normal circadian rhythm, he like many other villains often fell to bouts of light napping in lieu of proper slumber.

He almost winced at the bright and exuberant voice on the other end of the line; almost hung up on her on point of principle, but the offer and circumstances of the clown woman’s call were too curious to pass over.

He agreed to their suggestion and promptly hung up to set about readying his supplies.

The party arrived precisely at half-past three, child in tow.

Strange little thing, the girl looked to be.

Small, and clearly too young for the cape she was sporting, the child carried herself with a grace he’d never encountered in any youth before; the black horns emanating from her scalp seemed to attest to her inhuman nature.

“It’s good that you came to me, my dears,” he professed, “You’ll want to keep this one away from Tetch, if you care for her,” he warned, as noted the girl’s dollish face; “He means well but you know how fixated he gets.”

The plant woman grunted, perhaps in agreement; he never could tell with her, with how seemingly exasperated at everything the woman always seemed to be.

“Still, come in come in,” he welcomed, ushering the group into his lair, “Please take a seat and tell me more about this fascinating dilemma.”

When everyone was seated, Scarecrow laced his fingers together, and kept his gaze locked respectfully at the spot just under Harley’s nose; he didn’t dare risk encouraging… any of her _behaviors_ by making direct eye contact, and nor did he wish to risk dismemberment by her plant controlling companion for ‘spurring anything on’.

“This here is Raven,” Harley introduced; the name already sparking curiosity and half ignored parallels.

Why would a harlequin need a blackbird, he wondered, before pushing the thought aside; he’d leave the riddling to Eddy.

“She’s got some troubles with some nightmares,” Harley continued.

“Not anything of my doing, I assure you,” he declared absently; he clearly remembered not having done anything than study his control groups for some stretch of time, and he hadn’t had any children go missing from his studies.  

“We want you to find out what she’s afraid of,” Harley clarified, interrupting his musings.

“...Intriguing,” he answered; “Fear, I can do,” he replied, standing.

He thought for a moment, and rubbed the sackcloth over his chin.

“Move the child to the armchair, I’ll be right back,” he placated, before venturing into his makeshift miniature testing lab; while he, like most villains, had many hideaways scattered across the city, he was forever thankful he’d nabbed the two bedroom apartment before Dent had. Made his life so much more organized, he mused as he rifled through his cabinet of oddly colored vials; and Harvey that much more prominently vexed.    

He selected a preliminary testing dose, and moderately sized needle of unnecessary long length, before returning back to his guests.

“Alright, now remember this is for science Child,” he began as began filling the syringe, “So please be as honest about your experiences as you can.”

The girl didn’t respond, which a little odd; he set the syringe on the counter behind her, before pulling a little packet containing a tiny sterilizing wipe from his coat pocket.

He grabbed the girl’s arm and tried not to chuckle as he all but felt the redhead behind him fuming.

“Not that my needles are rusty,” he chuckled; “at least not this one anyway,” he teased.

Harley snickered, temporarily reminding Crane of how much he enjoyed the clown’s penchant for malice; cleaning done, he returned his attention to the syringe.

“You seem to excel at sitting still, Child,” he rambled as he tapped the air bubbles out of the elixir; “keep doing that.”

The girl’s eyes twitched a bit, as he brought the needle to her arm; the needle slid inside the vein easily. The girl looked to the two women she’d been escorted by, likely in an instinctual drive for security, before turning her glance back to her arm.

Crane pressed the plunger; he did so slowly, more out of habit than mercy.

He did so hate it when errant air bubbles killed off his subject supply.

“Now, you should begin to feel yourself enter a state of woozy-like semi-lucidity, ripe for suggestibility and exploitation,” he explained happily; he paused his speech long enough to remove the needle and ruffled the girl’s hair.

“Luckily for you, Moppet, your Mommies have very specific plans for what we’ll uncover this evening.”

Unrestricted, a few more chuckles escaped him; oh, how he _loved_ science.  

He grabbed a notepad from his coffee table, sending a few newspapers and magazines skittering across the floor.

He drug the coffee table in front of the armchair, the non-rubbered feet making a terrible screeching dredge across the wooden floor.

As he sat down he fiddled about his coat until Harley tapped his shoulder, an understanding smile gracing her belaying features.

He took the pen and nodded, dismissing the clown back to her seat before addressing the girl.

“Wonderful, now then,” he began, allowing the fabric of his mask to stretch about uncannily around his face, “Close your eyes. Tightly now, no peeking.”

The girl’s eyes closed obediently, prompting Crane to wish if only half of his test subjects could be so compliant.

“Good, good. Now, I want you to think back. Think carefully now, across everything you can remember. What stands out to you that you don’t like?” he asked purposefully, “What are you afraid to remember? What makes you quiver in the night?”

Ivy’s huff and Harley’s fidgeting were little more than background noise, as Crane watched the child; her face scrunched up slightly, in thought. It was as tho Crane could see the gears in her little head turning and churning around and around.  

Then, before his eyes, the girl’s face started to pale.

The child pressed back into the seat, as if she could put distance between herself and what was in her mind.

Her mouth started to twitch, and Crane caught glimpses of pearly teeth between in the beginnings of her snarls.

“Yes yes, keep thinking now,” he goaded; it was always such a delight to watch the fear take hold.

The girl started to tremble; her lips parted wider, and Crane noted with some interest that her teeth were almost animalistic in nature. A dog’s perhaps, he guessed, though animal husbandry was far from his strong suit.

The lights around the room began to flicker, which he at first nearly contributed to missing the payment of his electrical bill, before recalling that he had… ensured, that his landlord would require no reimbursements from him at all.

A strange black substance started to worm its way out of the chair, and cusp around the child’s body, lending him to believe that the girl’s nature was physically based in some way.

His grin widened.

He leaned a little closer to get a better look at the girl’s face.

Red eyes snapped open, a number of them far too many to not be surprising; off guard, he reeled back and nearly fell off his seat.

The girl made a sound with her mouth that Crane wish he’d been able to record for future use in other experiments.

Clearly on guard now, the girl was suffering from the full effects of the serum.

“What do you fear, child,” he asked clearly; there was little point for malice now, when there were too many things to learn.   

The girl growled, her little body hunched over herself; for a split second, Crane could have sworn he’d seen a flicker of forked tongue dart between her teeth.

“My father,” the girl murmured at last, in an accent far from the usual Crane could recall hearing.

“Ahh… yes,” he offered, jotting several of the observations he’d noted down, “Fathers tend to cause a lot of problems in young children. Tell me child, are you afraid of him touching you? Or was the type of man who yelled a lot?”

The girl was silent again, her pairs of eyes squinted closed as her face snarled absently around in the air, her body jerking as she tried to avoid the images and memories that plagued her.

“Denying your fears only increases their power,” he chided, as he wrote another note.

The girl hissed, but managed to still herself for the most part.

“My father is a demon,” she growled.

All at once, Crane noted that everything went absolutely bonkers, so much so that he briefly wondered if Harley had gassed him with some new strand of Joker toxin.

The flickering lights were now blaring like strobelights; his furniture had seemed to take life all its own and was now hovering and swirling about in the air of their own accord.

The women behind him yelped as the couch tipped up and flung itself into the ceiling, dropping them to their knees.

“Grab her,” he ordered, as he tried to forcibly keep the armchair firmly on the ground.

Thick vines slithered into life as Harley dashed by him, grabbing the bottom of the chair and rooting it into the floor below; Ivy joined Harley by the child’s side, and they pressed the girl’s shoulders back into the chair.

“This is getting interesting,” he mused, eager to see what else the night had in store.    

Question after question however, proved fruitless as the girl worked herself further and further into a state of refusal; she squirmed and hissed, likely suffering from hallucinations, and then intermittently tried to hold her breath, in vain attempts to calm herself down, even after he’d explained that her efforts were meaningless to the chemical reactions happening inside of her body.  

Not even a second, slightly stronger dosage proved helpful in prying anything more from the girl’s resisting psyche; occasionally she’d shriek or yelp a pointed ‘no’, but the word was all but useless for Crane’s purposes.

It took a third dose, of a full normal strength he usually reserved for the Bat himself, to break her down.

He was nearly impressed.

Whoever had trained her, had certainly done their diligence; he wondered if the Bat had lost a new charge, before refocusing to the task at hand and scribbled down a few more notes.

The girl sobbed, her shrieks meeting the clenched teeth of her captors on either side of the chair.

The amount of magical whiplash that they’d braced themselves through showed around their tired bodies and grim determined expressions.

He himself, also felt the strain of the interrogation, having likewise been flung across the room several instances; he could already feel that his back and his hip would be aching come the morrow.

“It’ll be easier for everyone,” he warned the girl again, “If you just tell us what you’re afraid of, child. We can do this all night you know. We could drag this out for days, if we wanted to. Weeks, even,” he continued, wiping the blood off of his lip; “I for one, would find it a pleasure, I do assure you,” he seethed.

The tension from the air, that had seemed so thick and stiflingly hot, seemed to dwindle as the girl started to fall quieter.

He took a moment to compose himself as the furniture, what was left of it, slowly came to their landings on the floor.

Harley shuddered once, while Ivy coaxed the vines encircling the child to slacken.

The girl tried to speak, and for a moment Crane was hopeful, until the syllables proved themselves to be mindless garbles.

He scoffed in indignation, annoyed at himself for getting so worked up over the thought that a _child_ of all things could prove entertaining,as Ivy murmured something he didn't care to pay attention to at the girl.

A strangled sound cut off from the child’s mouth, which did catch his attention, prompted him to turn slightly, to face her once more.

“I’m afraid of the day I’ll be born again,” she murmured, barely loud enough for any of them to hear, through stuttering teeth and sniveling shakes.

The women above her exhaled in relief, apparently satisfied; the girl remained silent, save for the sounds of her labored breathing. 

Disgusting as the tears streaming down her face were, and the snot bubbling around her nostrils, Crane decided that the girl was an interesting person after all.

He wrote down the admission for prosperity, and kindly asked the women to take the girl and get the hell out of his apartment, at their refusal to leave the girl for further study.

After they left, and he was standing in the ruin of the quiet room, Crane added a final note, to keep an eye on the girl, as he had a creeping curiosity as to how the child’s fortunes would unfold. 


	13. Chapter 13

“Do you have any idea what that could mean?” Ivy asked, recounting the phrase Raven had muttered under duress. 

“It sounds mystical-y,” Selina replied as she inspected her clawtips; “I have a few contacts that might be able to help figure it out.”

“Would any of those figures not come equipped with the regalia of a Bat?” Ivy snipped. 

“Don’t be catty, Daisy,” Selina quipped, resting her claws on her hip; “I’ll see about setting you up with Madame Zodiac -you like her, don’t you?” 

Ivy crossed her arms and attempted not to grouse at the suggestion. 

“She double-crossed me, if you remember,” Ivy recalled, her cadence cool but not entirely devoid of warmth. 

“An unbiased favor is usually the best one to call in,” Catwoman dismissed, shrugging.  

The latex and leather-clad woman tilted her head slightly, her bottom lip pinned momentarily between her teeth. 

“So how's she handling it? The kid, I mean,” Selina broached, her tone laced with a bit of awkward concern. 

“Managing,” Ivy replied calmly; “She'll get over it sooner or later.”

“Or not,” she warned. 

“You'd rather we take her to Arkham? - Or Thatch?” Ivy mused; Catwoman, in turn, exhaled a surrendering breath. 

“Her magic is too strong to ignore,” Ivy stated offhandedly, giving the catburglar pause; “It'll only get stronger as she grows. I'd rather nip any offshoots in the roots now than risk any stranglers sprouting later.”

“You’re really going all in on this kid, Red,” she broached, her words cautious but tenderly hopeful.

Ivy took a minute to reply, visibly uncomfortable with the amount of human emotion she was no doubt being plagued by. 

“Sidekicks are all the rage this season,” she offered at length, “Thought I’d cultivate the best prospect for my own.” 

Selina nodded, the answer good enough to rationalize away; Gotham was strange enough a place as it was. There wasn’t any reason she could come up with, to stand contemplating the individual events that never stopped happening around her for any longer than she had to.   

That, and, Selina admitted, Ivy had always had something of a soft spot for the notion of raising children, dispute all her awful ways of bringing her dream of domesticity into being.

The train of thought led her back to the clown doll. 

“Take it Harley’s pretty stoked,” she offered, not quite question nor statement. 

Ivy’s features softened sadly, as they often did when mention of the woman was brought up; Selina hoped for both their sakes, their dances of Greek tragedy would come to an end, one way or another. 

“She run back to the Joker?” Selina ventured. 

“Not yet,” Ivy replied, the rain weighing down the great volumes of her hair; “Not that that means much.”

Selina restrained herself from biting her lip again and slipped on a warming smile. 

“Maybe she’ll stick around this time, with the kid and all,” she tried, “The bastard could never give her that.” 

“Perhaps,” Ivy replied, in a manner that almost made Selina wonder if Ivy agreed with her. 

Selina allowed them both a minute to take in the comforting cacophony of the city, some odd number of stories below. 

“Big heist tonight?” Ivy asked; surprising Selina for the companionable nature of her tone.

Taking advantage of the woman’s rarely surfacing humanity, Selina replied, “Reconnaissance; gotta’ figure out why Black Mask is vying to steal the Cat’s Eye Emerald out from under my claws.”

“You know it’s a trap,” Ivy drawled, humor on her tongue. 

Selina exhaled an airy laugh; “Yeah I know. But a girl’s gotta’ set her standards, you know.” 

“True,” Ivy agreed.

The woman stretched, and pulled her hair back, wringing some of the excess water from it, and let it fall behind her back. 

Her eyes were brilliantly keen, which Selina was admittedly supportive of. 

“Good luck tonight, Cat,” she offered, clearly taking her exit; “Let me know when you get to Madame Zodiac.” 

Catwoman nodded; “Good luck with the chemical heist. Let me know when you need me to babysit again; little tyke was kinda cute.”   

Ivy turned with a flare, and her rotund elevator-vine began to unfurl while the woman stepped onto it. 

“Tell the girls I said hi!” Selina called, as Ivy began to descend back down to the streets below. 

Ivy waved a hand dismissively, as she fell below the edge of the building. 

Selina allowed herself a moment to smirk, before cracking her whip with an excited zeal. 

She turned, and readied herself her evening escapade with joviality.    


End file.
